The Line is a Canyon
by Swordsman422
Summary: AU Sequel to "Judge the Sky." Ejected into the Carolina wilderness, John and Cameron must find a way to survive and evade the authorities. But with Cameron damaged and a terminator closing for the kill, can they rescue Sarah and Derek from a Navy brig?
1. Author's notes and Prologue

The Line is a Canyon

A Terminator: SCC FanFiction

Disclaimer: I do not own Sarah Connor Chronicles or the Terminator Saga. The following events are fictional. Any similarity to real events or people is totally coincidental. At least, they better be.

Author's notes: This is a sequel story to Judge the Sky. If you haven't read that fic yet, you should. The entire situation presented here branches from that story. While I try to avoid giving more than what was in the series, there is some Jameron in here. Don't cheer yet, you may not like what you find.

I promise, in spite of the enormous technical detail of my previous story, to avoid unnecessary techno-babble, hyper-technical focus, or lengthy discussions of the operational functions of anything other than Cameron, So Help Me God. While this is a sequel to Judge the Sky, we're not on a navy base any more.

There is some fictional geography in this story. I have more liberty now. Some of the places mentioned are either made up or have been changed for the sake of the story. North Carolina residents, please forgive me. The real world was just not convenient.

I am going to try a little experiment with this one and occasionally scenes will include music in separated italics. The experiment will probably fail.

The tone if this story is more humorous that my previous effort. After all that seriousness, a little silliness might do some good.

A reminder: this story is AU, ignoring "To the Lighthouse," "Adam Raised a Cain," and "Born to Run."

Thank you all who reviewed my previous tale. You are the force that kept me going, and despite of my prolonged absence, it is you that kept me coming back. I promised this for you, and I'm going to deliver.

Enjoy.

...

Prologue

From the personal journal of Sarah Connor:

In 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori described the effect on the human psyche robots would have as they began to act and appear more like us. The theory stated that as robots became more and more like humans, people would respond to them more positively. However, there will come a point where the robots will be almost perfect in their replication of humanity, and humans observing them will experience revulsion. These will no longer be the quaint machines with crude programming tottering along and interacting with us in broken speech. They will be cybernetic organisms with realistic skin and speech patterns that walk and move and think like we do. They will be an almost perfect copy of us. But they won't _be_ perfect, and it will be the gap between our behavior and theirs that will disturb us most. The _almost_ will cause us to hate them.

Mori called this gap the Uncanny Valley, the separation between the near-perfect duplication of humanity and the real thing. If the positive feelings were graphed, they would rise steadily as the machine becomes more human until it reaches the point at which the _almost_ comes into focus. It takes a sharp dive here into negative emotional association. Only when the replication becomes perfect will the emotional response to a robot become positive again.

Cameron wasn't human, but her replication of humanity was almost perfect. It was that _almost_, that difference between her behavior and the behavior of a real girl that made John keep her at arm's length. It was that _almost_ that kept him from developing a closer relationship with her. That was all that I had to hold onto him with. If she ever crossed that line, ever climbed the Uncanny Valley, I knew I would lose him.


	2. Blood upon the Risers

Chapter 1: Blood Upon the Risers

_Beautiful streamer, please open for me. _

_Blue skies above me and no canopy. _

_I counted ten-thousand, waited too long._

_Reached for my ripcord, the handle was gone…_

The rush of the air past her audio sensors was enough to drown out any other sound, as if there could be any up here at twenty-thousand feet. Cameron Phillips had ejected from Gypsy 207 just moments before the navy SM-3 standard missile fired from the cruiser _Port Royal_ hit. John had gone out in his ejection seat before her and she followed a half-second later in the sequence.

"_Is everybody happy?" cried the sergeant looking up._

_Our hero meekly answered "yes" and then they stood him up._

_He leaped right out into the blast, his static line unhooked_

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

The seat had rocketed her out of the Super Hornet on the other end of a second before the surface-to-air missile blasted the plane with shrapnel and obliterated it. The ejection seat then fell away from her. Operationally, it should have automatically deployed her parachute, but the chute had failed to deploy. It was now streaming behind her, flapping in the wind. Whoever had packed it had not done it right.

_Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die._

_Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die._

_Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die._

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

When she looked up, into the vast dome of the blue sky above her, she could see the lingering missile trail, and the fading blot of the smoking impact. That was, when it was not blocked by the flapping of her parachute.

_He counted loud. He counted long. He waited for the shock._

_He felt the wind. He felt the cold. He felt that awful drop._

_The silk from his reserve spewed out and wrapped around his legs_

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

She tried to whip open the suspension lines of the parachute as her fall penetrated into the overcast. It was to no avail, the streamer was dreaded. She could tell by the whistling sound it made in the wind. The air pressure was keeping it closed too forcefully for even her machine strength to open it.

_The risers wrapped around his neck. Connectors cracked his dome._

_Suspension lines were tied in knots around his skinny bones._

_His canopy became a shroud as he hurtled towards the ground._

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

Remembering the tools in her survival vest, she reached down and grasped a yellow tab protruding from one of the pockets. On the end of this strip of cloth was a shroud-line cutter. She began slashing at the cords with the hook-shaped tool, cutting through them as fast as she could manage with them whipping about.

_Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die._

_Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die._

_Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die._

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

A final cord to cut through and she was free. The line snapped with a crack, lashing her in the face and cutting her cheek. The line also carried away her cutter, but at least she was free. Her HUD told her she was passing through fifteen-thousand feet now. The cushion of the ejection seat would house the reserve parachute. It was strapped to her back with about three feet of slack. She had to reach it.

_The days he'd lived and loved and laughed kept running through his mind._

_He thought about the girl back home, the one he left behind._

_He thought about the medics and he wondered what they'd find_

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

A bout of turbulence in the clouds, and the cyborg was tumbling end over end, unable to stabilize herself. She reached back and grabbed the inadequate seat cushion, now the only thing that might save her from destruction. The ripcord for the reserve was easy to locate, and she yanked it. The pilot chute popped out and pulled the main canopy along with it. In her tumble, the whole thing spilled into Cameron's face.

_The ambulance was on the spot. The jeeps were running wild._

_The medics jumped and screamed with glee, rolled up their sleeves, and smiled._

_For it had been a week or so since last a chute had failed_

_And he ain't gonna jump no more_.

The likelihood that a properly packed parachute will fail is about 1 in 40,000. For the reserve chute to then also fail is about 1 in 80,000. Cameron was apparently the statistic. She was now in a horseshoe; imprisoned in an angrily flapping nylon canopy trapped against her body and streaming down either side. As she passed ten thousand feet, she started to force the chute over her head, where it might deploy.

_Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die._

_Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die._

_Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die._

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

The offending parachute made a stubborn fight, but Cameron finally managed to get it off after it spent a few harrowing seconds caught on her chin. She shock of its departure carried away her helmet, and so now her brown hair was whipping wildly in the breeze and her eyes were watering to keep the biological covering from drying up. She was at five thousand feet now and the reserve chute had entirely failed to deploy. It had also formed a streamer, but there was no whistle of the air rushing past the leak hole in the top. She grabbed the suspension lines and tried to whip out the canopy. The air caught, and the chute bloomed. Well, partially anyway. One of the skirt panels was pulled between the suspension lines. She had an inversion in progress. The parachute had slowed her down, but if the crisis continued, Cameron could be looking at a serious failure of her chute, a hard landing, and quite a bit of damage. A glance below her revealed that she was falling into a wooded area.

_He hit the ground. The sound was splat. The blood went spurting high._

_His comerades were heard to scream "what a hell of a way to die!"_

_He lay there rolling around in all the welter of his gore_

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

The inversion only made it to the Mae West stage, where the chute was contorted to look like a giant bra. Cameron hit the tree line hard, slamming her face into the upper branches of a pine tree. Her weight pushed aside most of the dainty limbs and she fell through the forest canopy. Twigs, foliage, and vine scraped, slapped, and cut at her as she dropped. The parachute caught on a branch strong enough to hold her, and she stopped with a violent jolt.

_There was blood upon the risers. There were brains upon his chute._

_Intestines were a dangling from his paratrooper suit._

_They poured him from his helmet and they poured him from his boots_

_And he ain't gonna jump no more._

Tilting her head up, she saw her parachute draped over a hefty tree limb, irrevocably snagged. Below her, the seat pan survival kit hung by a strap to the garter around her left shin, and to that a fully inflated life raft dangled almost humorously. Beyond that, the ground was eighty-three feet below her. And there was not a single branch within reach to climb down. She was stuck.

While she had the time, she ran a quick diagnostic of her systems. There were a number of damage indicators to her biological sheath, including a cut on her cheek and the tear on her temple from where Commander McCowen had struck her with the helmet just hours ago. Otherwise she was in perfect operational condition.

Now she just needed to find a way to get down. She had to find John.

...

John Connor couldn't breathe. Cromartie was choking him. In his panic that he was going to die, some part of John's mind told him that the terminator, who he had seen dead and buried, was doing it wrong. Instead of gripping him by the throat, the machine assassin was covering his mouth and nose. His hand smelled funny, too. John struggled, trying to pull his head away, but he couldn't escape. He reached up and grabbed Cromartie's arm, a last ditch effort to pull the hand away while his lungs burned with bad air. He gagged. The arm felt flimsy, like a rubber tube. Like the hose of an oxygen mask.

The teenager's eyes fluttered open. He reached up to his face to feel the MBU-24 sealed to it. Frantically he grasped for the bayonet clips at the cheeks of his helmet. The pull-tab on one was jammed, but the other worked. He yanked it and the bayonet clip slid out of the receiver. His face was exposed to the air. He could breathe again.

John looked around. He was floating in the middle of nowhere dressed like a fighter pilot. The world around him was hazy, like he was in a deep fog. He heard a rustle above him and looked up. A parachute bloomed over his head. He began to remember.

They had killed Wiley and were headed back, but somehow they'd been made. A ship had fired a missile at them. Cameron had made him eject.

Cameron! Oh, God, where was she? There was no sense looking around in this. He must be in the clouds. He had blacked out during ejection and had not seen her come out. What if she didn't eject? What if her seat misfired? That missile must have been close. What if she hadn't had time? There would be parts of her strewn in with the wreckage of the airplane.

He could not resist the feelings that he had lost a friend. She wasn't just a machine, a body guard to protect him. She had been his friend. His best friend, now that he thought about it.

_She still was_, he thought to himself harshly. Until he found absolute proof that she was dead, he was going to move under the assumption that she was still functional… alive.

What of his mother? And Derek? If the cruiser had chosen to destroy them, then it was just as likely someone had recognized her or Derek. They were probably in a navy brig right now.

The white haze rose away from him like a curtain and he could look down at the terrain below now. He was falling into a pine forest that was dotted with small lakes. He looked what he assumed was east and saw the stretching bow of the shore line, and beyond that the chain of islands that made up the Carolina outer banks. By his reckoning, he had drifted at least fifteen miles inshore. That would give them some margin, since the whole Navy would be looking for them and the ejection seats each put out emergency transponder signals. While he and Cameron would be far separated from the seats, it would give those hunting them a good clue as to where to start. And while being down in the woods would make them harder to find, the landing would be rougher. They would lose time if one of them got stuck in a tree.

John grabbed the risers of the parachute, hoping to maybe steer himself towards a clearing if he could find one. After a few tugs, he realized that he didn't have much control over the chute, and there didn't seem to be any clearings down there that weren't filled with water. It was either trees or pond, and he better pick fast because he was coming down.

The choice was made for him. A gust of wind pushed him towards one of the larger bodies of water. He was going for a swim. He had a horse-collar life preserver strapped to his survival vest. The carbon dioxide inflation cartridges were supposed to be water activated, but they would not keep his head above the water if the parachute dragged him down. He felt around for the cutter and found it, patting the pocket it was in to keep his muscle memory. The seat pan also had a life raft in it. Once he was in the water, he could climb into that and paddle to the shore. Struggling to remember all he learned for this mission, he recalled that the raft would automatically inflate with a pull cord that was gravity activated. The seat pan and its survival kit was hanging from his left leg, and he reached for it. The lower compartment of the seat pan was supposed to open automatically, spilling out the yellow raft about fifteen feet. When the lanyard went taut, the raft would deploy. The shell bottom of the seat pan was still attached, keeping the raft from falling. John pulled his leg up, reached down, and jerked a handle on the upper shell that should have done the trick. It didn't.

"God damn it," he shouted to no one. Fumbling with the seat pan, he pried it open and the raft dropped out. It fell to the end of its rope, and nothing. The CO2 bottle failed to trigger. Furious, John realized that he didn't have much time left. He hauled the folded raft back up and baseball-pitched it down. When it hit the end of the line this time, there was a loud hiss and the thing inflated finally. Not too soon, he was maybe a hundred feet over the water.

The parachute was strapped to him through his torso harness, connected at the koch buckles at his shoulders and thighs. It didn't take a genius to realize that he would need to unbuckle these as soon as he hit the water. Tensing, he locked his legs together with his knees bent. He took a deep breath. Here it came.

He plunged into the center of the lake, and instantly began sinking on his back. Quickly, he unclipped the parachute fittings. The life preserver hadn't deployed because it was _salt _water activated! There were beaded cords to pull on each side and he gripped them, but as he was about to yank, the parachute settled on the surface just above him and began to sink. The shroud lines started to lay over him as the chute gained water.

Fumbling for the cutter, he began attacking the lines as quickly as he could. He managed to cut through the first pretty easily, but the second and third gave him some trouble. The parachute had sunk behind him now and was starting to drag him down. He kicked for the surface and sliced at the cords. He got through two more before he accidentally knocked the cutter against his hand and dropped it. Desperately, he flailed for it, but it had already dropped out of reach. The raft was floating on the surface, pulling his legs up and the tangles of shroud lines were pulling his torso down. He was being flipped over.

He remembered his survival knife and tore it out of the sheath on the front of the vest. Sawing hard with the ka-bar, he got the rest of them cut. He wasn't loose yet. They were tangled around his body. He tore at them with the knife and his free hand, throwing them off of himself. His lungs were beginning to burn for fresh oxygen and he was ten feet below the surface now. Frantically, he shoved the tangles from his body until he felt that he was free. Paddling with his arms, he got himself upright just as the color began to wash out of his vision. He gripped the beaded cords with gloved hands and gave them a hard jerk.

His head was surrounded with a halo of bubbles as CO2 rushed into the life preserver to inflate it. He rocketed to the surface, splashing up out of the water and drawing a deep, gasping breath as he broke. Wiping the water from his eyes, he tread for a moment, catching his breath. The raft was floating a few feet away and he reached out for it. On a three-count, he pulled himself into it and flopped down, exhausted from the effort of saving himself.

After a few restful minutes in the raft, John managed to get the oxygen mask to slide out of the jammed bayonet receiver and get his helmet off. He also took off the soggy gloves and stuffed them one of his many pockets. His next task was to get to the shore and find Cameron. He rolled over on his belly and began paddling with his arms for the shore.

...

There would be some obstacles on the way down, a few hearty branches were mixed in with the twigs, all well below her. Cameron determined she would have to fall a good thirty-five feet before she was able to even catch one of the branches. There was too much pressure on the parachute fittings for her to unbuckle them. No, this was going to take a knife and some cutting. She had brought out her ka-bar, and after cutting the seat pan and raft loose was now sawing away at the parachute straps at her shoulders. She was halfway through the first when she heard a crackling of static.

"Cameron? Hello? Cameron, are you there?" It was John's voice. He was using the PRC-112 survival radio to try to raise her. She had one of her own in the big pocket on the left panel of her vest. She paused from her work and pulled it out.

"Turn off your radio," she warned him, "they can track us this way."

"Cameron, thank God," John did not heed her warning, "are you all right?"

"Yes. I'm in a tree but I'm trying to get down. Stop talking please."

"Where are you? I went into that big lake, the one shaped like Ohio. I'm on the eastern shore now. Do you want me to fire of a flare?" He had obviously found the pen flare launcher among his survival gear.

"No," she said, perhaps too forcefully. Using her playback of her fall, she was able to form a detailed map of the area and spotted the Lake Ohio John spoke of and plotted her position from there. "I'm three hundred yards north-northeast of you in a tree. Turn. Off. The radio."

"Okay, be right there." Cameron stared for a second at the handheld unit and allowed herself a smirk before stuffing it back into its pocket. Retrieving the knife, she continued to cut through the strap. It parted easily and she went swinging on the single strap remaining. With machine resolution, she began working on the other. This one was holding her full weight, and it was a grave miscalculation on her part when, at half-way through, the whole thing tore loose. Cameron dropped like a coltan stone. She flailed in the air for her target branch and missed entirely with her hands. Her forehead found it instead, impacting hard right at the hairline just below the maintenance hatch for her chip. As she continued to fall, her world winked out.

...

"Have _Port Royal_'s helicopter move into that area and begin searching," Admiral Fuller commanded. The screen dominating the Oceana Naval Air Station operations center shows two markers, emergency beacons, which were from the ejections seats of Gypsy 207. Presumably, the two people who had stolen the aircraft had managed to eject before the SM-3 hit them. They had managed to get inshore before being taken down. It would make them harder to track.

Sarah Connor and Derek Reese were seated in chairs, their hands and feet bound in chains. Commander Forrester, the JAG officer that had identified Sarah was standing next to them. So were two marines, each with a weapon just in case.

"Looks like your friends are going to make the hunt difficult, Ms. Connor," Forrester said ruefully.

Sarah heard him, but her mind was entirely on John. Her son had escaped. He was free. That was all that mattered. She smiled up at the Navy man, "you have no idea what you're getting into, Commander. None."


	3. Trifecta

Chapter 2: Trifecta

WARNING!

ERROR 0x390712

Block 636 through 1021 of file corrupted

Stop: 0x00001E (0x800092, 0x8008cb62, 0x812F4d1, 0x2D49357R)

Entry will be truncated

782459 982460 002579 501650 245015 256820

024578 200128 856201 985240 050125 902450

201852 022174 556002 320147 908542 904580

WARNING!

ERROR 0x345004

Block 2210 through 2392 of file corrupted

Stop: 0x00001E (0x800092, 0x8008cb62, 0x812F4d1, 0x2D49357R)

Entry will be truncated

054820 005202 963504 021458 352470 985670

900567 540200 785604 320157 098006 327089

908520 660654 980567 908631 105790 302487

WARNING!

ERROR 0x10974

File cannot be accessed. The file is missing or corrupted.

WARNING!

ERROR 0x00203

Start-up fail

System cannot start-up because a file is missing or corrupt.

File

Accessing file: .bak

WARNING!

ERROR 0x10974

File is a compressed back-up file. Decompression for use will take 18 hours 27 minutes. Proceed (y/n)?

N

WARNING!

Unable to start chassis interface and higher-function systems. Problem caused by IBP protocol failure. File is missing or corrupt.

Options:

1) Attempt to start normally using primary

2) Decompress back-up for primary

3) Attempt to start using an alternative

4) Shut down and await repair

3) Attempt to start using an alternative

Please specify:

Accessing file:

WARNING!

File is not recommended for primary operation. Proceed (y/n)?

Y

ENTER

System Start...

Control program function initiated...

_Finally!_

System Start Halted...

_Oh, god damn it!_

File is not recommended for primary operation and may cause program failures.

_I _know_ this already. Proceed. Please._

Recommend Reboot and start-up using .

Restart now (y/n)?

N _Not after last time. Is there an option for Hell N?_

ENTER

REACTIVATE

acv FEP01-32

proc: 00 online

upd: sys routine

updated

ROUTING POWER TO BASIC SYSTEMS

CONFIGURING CHASSIS INTERFACE...

INITIATING CHASSIS BUILT-IN TESTING

PRIMARY POWER SYSTEMS... OPERATIONAL

SECONDARY POWER SYSTEMS... OPERATIONAL

MECHANICHAL AND MOBILITY CONTROL... OPERATIONAL

WARNING! MECHANICAL FAULT IN SERVO 33: CUBOID

SERVO IS NOT FUNCTIONAL

_Oh, crap._

BIOLOGICAL MAINTENANCE... OPERATIONAL

DAMAGE ASSESSMENT IN PROGRESS. RESULTS WILL BE DESIPLAYED AFTER START.

AUTONOMOUS TACTIVE SENSOR NETWORK... OPERATIONAL

_Oh, my God, that hurts!_

VESTIBULAR GYRO... OPERATIONAL

KENESTHETIC SENSORS... OPERATIONAL

AUDITORY RECIEVERS... OPERATIONAL

OLFACTORY DETECTORS... OPERATIONAL

GUSTATION SENSORS... OPERATIONAL

_Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Wake up Cameron!_

OCULAR SCANNERS... OPERATIONAL

CHASSIS INTERFACE CONFIGURED

LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM CONFIGURATIONS...

LOADING CUSTOM INTERFACE CONFIGURATIONS: CAMERON PHILLIPS/ Infiltration Reference Personality AY-2027193...

SYSTEM CONFIGURED

ACTIVATING HEADS-UP DISPLAY

_Finally!_

Cameron came out of her reboot cycle already screaming. The loud wail of agony conversely surprised her into silence. She was too busy with herself to realize that she was surprised to begin with. The first thing she was able to notice was a severe tactile damage warning in her left ankle. A damage assessment flashed up, overlapping her ocular vision. It showed her something she already knew; that the servo in her ankle, the one on which she put all her weight when she walked, was wrecked. The impulses of data she was receiving from the area was interpreted in a way she had only ever experienced once before.

Cameron Phillips, the emotionless machine, was feeling pain. That she was feeling pain was nothing really new to her. The tactive sensors worked in the same way the human nervous system did. Damage was detected and transmitted as pain, an indication of location and severity of damage that did not require the terminator to search for it. What would be surprising to anyone familiar with terminators was that Cameron was having an emotional response to it.

_This is not like the supermarket failure,_ she thought to herself, and immediately began to wonder if she was not just reassuring herself. She was at least aware of what and who she was this time. The last time she had triggered the 098drp file she thought she was Allison Young and it took cycling through her memories to learn that she was, in fact, a machine. Cameron had taken steps to ensure that it would never happen again. And before that, she had gone ahead and reverted to 098base, and had woken up trying to kill John. Subsequently, she took steps to ensure that it would _absolutely_ never happen again.

She closed the damage display and began scanning the world around her. She was lying on her back, looking up at the tree she had fallen out of. Her parachute was still snagged on that branch, and was probably visible from overhead. The branch that her head had struck was broken away, and with a turn of her head she could see it lying a few feet from her. The survival knife was stabbed into the ground near her head. The whole image made her want to scream at herself for her unparalleled ineptitude. She should have inspected the harness straps for damage before cutting away at them. And she most certainly should have ran simulations of her trajectory during a fall so that she could have reacted more quickly. But she'd been careless again, just like she'd been careless on several other occasions. But now was different. Now she could be mad at herself about it instead of just processing the error and learning from it.

The ankle pulsed again, and in an uncontrollable moment of anguish, she winced, gritted her teeth, and drew in a long breath with the air intake pumps that served her as lungs.

"Cameron?" John's face appeared in her vision. The HUD identified him and reminded her of her duty to protect him. _Good. That worked out right._ The boy's eyes were wide with concern. "Are you okay? I mean, are you functional?"

Cameron sat up and brushed the dead leaves from her hair, "I'm alright, except for my cuboid servo in my ankle."

"What does that mean," John asked as he helped her to her feet. "Don't tell me you're damaged from falling out of a tree?"

"A tall tree," the cyborg said perhaps defensively, "and it isn't so much how far I fell as how I must have landed." There was no telling whether the damage to the servo had just occurred or if it had been weakened over several months of abuse and this was the final straw. This was the same leg damaged in the car bomb, which she had never been able to repair to satisfaction. The instant g-forces of the ejection might have contributed, and she'd probably landed her full weight on it at an awkward angle. The distance she had fallen was not enough to achieve terminal velocity, but she'd decked at a speed of almost twenty-three miles per hour. A not insignificant hit; it would be enough to total a car. The ground here was rocky, too. That might have contributed to impact force.

She made a ginger test of the ankle's strength by resting some weight on it. The damage output increased tenfold and the machine stumbled with a cry that surprised John.

"Shit," the terminator gasped, "I can't walk. The servo is too badly damaged. I can't even rest any weight on it."

"Well," John offered, "I'll fix it."

"You can't," Cameron said firmly. "It will have to be replaced, and even if you could, there isn't time. Replacing the unit will take around thirty minutes. They'll find us by then." She locked her brown eyes on his green ones. "You have to leave me behind."

John glared at her as she sat back down and leaned against the tree. "I can't just leave you here!"

"You don't have a choice."

"I'm not just going to ditch you! I can't."

"You don't have a choice, John!" Cameron's voice was stern, nearly angry, and she realized that she felt it. She paused and reevaluated her tone, but decided to remain firm. "You don't have a choice. You can't repair me and I can't walk. You have to go on alone. You have to run. If they catch you, they'll put you in jail and every terminator that might want to will be able to find you and kill you. I can't protect you in prison. My mission is to keep you alive. Let me do that one last time."

John's eyes were hard, searching her face. He wasn't letting himself be surprised by her emotional outbursts. He had time for that later. Right now he was trying to think of a way to keep them together. "It doesn't matter anymore," he shouted.

"Yes it does…"

"No, it doesn't. No it doesn't, okay? Look, we just blew Wiley out of the sky. There is no more Skynet. There will never be Skynet. I'm not John Connor, leader of the resistance anymore. I'm John Connor, teenaged kid." He pointed at her, "but if I leave you behind, they will find you. And they'll take you apart. And they'll make another Skynet from what's left. Alright, I can't let that happen. Everything we did today will mean nothing if that happens and I can't let it."

They stared at each other for several seconds, both firm and resolute in their rightness. Neither was willing to budge, but Cameron wanted to argue him into the ground, drive it home that there was no way he could save her. "How would you propose to get me out of here?"

The boy glanced sideways, thinking hard. He took several hard breaths and worked his jaw.

The thundering rhythmic thump of the rotors was sudden. The sound of the helicopter startled them both. Cameron looked up as it flew above them over the trees. She would have easily identified it as a Sikorsky just by the engine noise, and the processed sound demodulated from it gave her a blade count of four. It was a Blackhawk of some variety, likely a US Navy MH-60S Sea Hawk. Her parachute would be easily visible from the air. So, she surmised, would John's raft.

"John, you have to go," she told him as the helicopter made a wide circle, "now."

He shook his head, eyes locked on her, "how much do you weigh?"

"I've told you before, that's not a polite question."

"I don't have time for your bullshit, Cameron," the teenager snapped, "either you go with me or we get caught together. I'm not leaving you. How much do you weigh?"

"One hundred fifty-seven pounds, five ounces," she replied evenly.

"Huh?" John wasn't sure he'd heard her right.

"One hundred fifty-seven pounds, five ounces," she confirmed. She could tell what he was thinking, "we wouldn't be very good infiltrators if we weighed twice what we look like we should. There's no more time to argue. Go!"

"No," he said, reaching for her, "You're coming with me." With only a little effort, John lifted her into a fireman's carry. Once he had her hoisted across his shoulders, he began running through the woods.

X

"_Port Royal_, Night Dipper 712. We've got a canopy in the trees. I also see a raft on the beach of one of the ponds. They've got to be down there somewhere."

"Understood, 712," the cruiser's tactical action officer responded. He had his own headset on now in an effort to coordinate the search. The other helicopter, 710, was searching the wreckage of Rampage 303 and 306 in hopes that somehow the pilots may have survived or even that bodies might be recovered, but it didn't look hopeful from there. The entire crew of the ship was furious that these terrorists had managed to steal a Navy jet and murder two of their colleagues. It was senseless.

"Can they put anyone on the ground," the ship's captain inquired, "if one of them is stuck in a parachute, we might still be able to catch him."

The TAO nodded, "712, can you ground anyone? Rescue swimmers or your crew chief, maybe?"

"We can, _Port Royal_, but it will be two guys in a pine forest. We don't know how far they've moved or what direction they went. If it was me, I'd have started running first chance I got."

The TAO glanced over at the captain. The _Port Royal_'s CO nodded once. "Do it, 712," the TAO commanded.

"Roger. It's probably going to take us ten minutes or so to get them down. Stand by." Time passed. Two men were lowered by a cable to the ground. A quick search determined that the site was abandoned. The fugitives were long gone.

X

"Admiral, it looks like they've escaped," the communications officer told Fuller, "one of our choppers put a couple men on the ground. They didn't find anything. Survival kit from one of the seat pans is gone, but with the ground cover, our guys can't even tell which way they might have went."

Fuller grumbled, "Fine. Tell them to keep searching if they can."

"Aye, sir,"

"I told you that you would never find them," Sarah taunted from her seat, "my son and his friend, they're survivors. I taught John everything he knows. You won't ever catch him. He'll disappear. You'll never see them again."

"Take her to the brig," Fuller shouted. Sarah and Derek were roughly picked up and carried to the base security office and the detention center there. Neither spoke on the trip. They were thrown in a cell together, and both of them sat down on the simple metal bench.

Derek spoke first, "do you mean that? You don't think they're going to try to rescue us?"

Sarah shook her head, "John's smart. He knows that he doesn't have anything to lose by abandoning us now. Cameron will make him run," she stopped talking and thought about it, "but he'll make one hell of an attempt to convince her to break us out. He's stubborn like that."

"Yeah," Derek agreed, "he's real hard-headed. Did you notice that the chopper spotted a parachute stuck in a tree? One of them was high up and got down. The raft must have been John's. If the machine landed there, it would have just walked out. John would have used the raft. That means the parachute was Cameron's. She must have cut herself down. Quite a ways to fall, even for them."

"I've pushed her out of a fourth-floor window without harming her," Sarah said, "she's fine."

"Forty feet is nothing. Out the top of a tall tree, though? Nah-uh. Not if she took the landing wrong. I'll bet you money I don't have that she's damaged."

"You don't even like her," Sarah sneered, "why are you so concerned?"

Derek pursed his lips and clicked is tongue, "because if she's damaged, then she's slowing him down. His attachment to her is going to get him caught."

"He's a smart boy. He'll be fine."

"Smart? He thinks of her as a pet, a friend, like she's a person. She's trash, now more than ever. If he were smart he would have left her in that tree."

"But he didn't," Sarah reminded him, "and we're in here, so she's all he's got."

X

John Connor was an excellent specimen of physical health. He jogged almost every day, got plenty of exercise, trained his body pretty hard. He was in good shape. His wiry, muscular frame was as fit as any athlete and his mind was as sharp as any soldier's. He had been running a long time before Cameron even began to feel heavy. It was the adrenaline wearing off. John was running out of steam. Every step he took felt like the last, and it took every ounce of courage he had to take another. But he kept going. If they got him, so what? But if they got her, the nightmare would just start all over again. If they got her, then he would be alone. They couldn't have her. He wouldn't let them. So he kept running until his legs and back ached, until his lungs burned and his mouth tasted of copper. He kept running until his knees finally buckled beneath him and he went down, gently. With his last ounce of strength, he laid her against a tree trunk and then plopped down, heaving from the effort.

"That was three miles," Cameron said her tone blank, "good effort."

"Think they'll find us," he asked her.

"The chance is very remote. It's been an hour since we left the site. They will have a difficult time finding us." John nodded at that and continued his efforts to catch his breath. Cameron looked at him, and part of her felt guilty that she was not as worn out as he. She could never be tired. "Thank you for saving me."

"You're welcome. It was nothing. I couldn't just leave you there. Too much was at stake."

"Your life…" she began. He interrupted her.

"My life means nothing now. Okay, not nothing. But not what it used to. If stopping Skynet is my mission forever, then part of that mission is protecting you."

"I understand." What an interesting reversal. Cameron had once been the protector, and John had been her mission. Now, the roles had switched. In order to stop Skynet from ever being created, Cameron had to live her life. She smiled at him and offered him a pouch of water from her vest. He took it and drank greedily.

Her damaged ankle servo reported in again in its own way, and she gritted her teeth, her hands going protectively to the damaged appendage.

"What's with you?" John had noticed her expressions of pain.

"I told you; I've got a damaged ankle servo. It hurts."

"But, you can't feel pain."

Cameron shook her head, "I can. My neural processors interpret any damage as pain."

"Oh. You've just never reacted this way to it before."

"Pain is unpleasant. At least, most humans think it is. Expressions of and reactions to pain stimuli are instinctive emotional responses."

John was confused, "huh? Wait, I've noticed you were being a kind-of less than machine, yelling at me and all."

"When I fell out of the tree, my head hit a branch on the way down pretty hard. Right on the chip hatch. It jarred my chip with a direct impact. Usually, it wouldn't have done any harm. I would just have been knocked out for a while." She recalled the time when she had been disabled at the Fields' cabin, "But since my chip was damaged in my accident, it is more vulnerable to further failures. And this was perfect, sweet-spot hit. I lost a couple of data storage sectors and one route of interconnect. They failed in the impact. My normal infiltration behavioral protocol was corrupted. The back-up was compressed and takes too much time. I had to restart using my deep infiltration reference protocol. We're not supposed to do that. The DRP is programmed based on the personality and memories of a real human being. We're only supposed to use it as a reference for infiltration."

"Why aren't you supposed to operate on it?"

"Let me preface this answer by saying that I as a matter of security protocol and as a result of being scrubbed, we are not always fully aware of our capabilities. A lot of what I am about to say is my own personal opinion based on my experiences with my own programing, but here it goes. We do not operate solely from it because the DRP program is too human, and too unpredictable. Skynet is better at programming human things like emotions and habits into a terminator than it is given credit for. If we used the reference personality for a basis of behavior, then there is no telling what we might do. Combined with our chips set to learning mode, we might start to care about our targets, go soft, join the resistance willingly. Several of the first infiltrators programmed to use a DRP were lost because of it. Instead, we are now limited to using an infiltration behavior program, which when necessary queries the reference personality. When we need something to say or a way to act, the reference program makes suggestions based on what the personality would do, and then we follow that suggestion."

"Okay," John held up a hand, "I'm confused. Are you telling me that there are multiple personalities in there trying to figure the world out?"

"You make me sound crazy," the cyborg smirked, actually _smirked_, at him. "That's not how it works at all. It's very difficult to explain exactly. You would have to know a lot about us. We're complicated. ."

John shrugged, "who else living now knows more than I do? Try me."

"Alright. Don't tell me I didn't warn you," Cameron began, "later model terminators like myself have three behavioral programs that, when we are set to learning mode, determine what we do and how we act. We have our base program, our default operating mode. It's very simple. It only follows the mission parameters. Go to location A and perform this task. It provides our drive, and it's entirely directive focused. Normally when a terminator reboots with a damaged IBP, we are directed to fall back on the base program. We have some control, but normally it is the quickest and least dangerous route to operation. You would never want me to be operating on the base behavioral program."

"Why not?"

"Because then I would try to kill you."

"Oh."

"Next, we have our infiltration behavior program. This is the system to determine how we accomplish our mission, putting limitations on the base behaviors or activating and deactivating them when necessary. We normally operate on this level. You might say that it's why we're so bland. But it allows us to have more autonomous control than a simple drone. I might still have the drive to kill you, but this program would allow me to choose time and place. It is also the program first rewritten by the resistance right after the start-up procedures. The base program is hard coded and cannot be changed.

"Finally, we have the infiltration personality. It's what allows us to convincingly replicate human behavior. Normally we don't refer to the infiltration personality unless we need to. In learning mode, we are able to apply more if the personality. We can add to it or make corrections when we need to. The way the programs interact ultimately determines our behavior. Kind of like how your memories, your expectations, and your genetic wiring determine how you act. But though we can do so, we should never run from just one primarily."

"But you are now?"

"Yes," Cameron replied, "I have to for the time being. It doesn't change who I am, just how I behave. I'm still me."

She could see he was not convinced. "Can you repair the problem?"

"Yes, but it will take a major program maintenance cycle to recover data off damaged sectors and repair corrupt files with compressed back-ups. Recent estimate is eighteen hours. I don't foresee us having eighteen hours for me to devote to it right now."

"Oh," John said, still not sure he understood everything. He had caught his breath now and he was feeling very weary, but there was one question he had to ask, something he had been wondering about for a while. "Sometimes, even though you are running on your standard personality or whatever, it seems like you still have moods and still make emotional responses sometimes. Why is that?"

Cameron simulated a sigh. She did not want to talk about this right now, but she supposed it was better that he knew. "Since the damage to my chip, I have been suffering from a phenomenon resistance programmers call data leak. It's not like unintentional data disclosure. It's something different. Let's say a program is like a cup, and all the lines of code that make up the program are like water in the cup. A data leak is like poking a hole in the cup." John made a face of vexation. Her analogy was inadequate. She tried again. "Okay, you have a program on a computer. The program is activated and runs. But once the program sequence ends, there are mysterious holes in the code. I've been having this very problem with my infiltration behavior program. The worst occasion was when I forgot I was a machine."

"I remember."

"Anyway, I've been having data holes showing up in the program that determines my primary behaviors. The damage to my chip included the memory sector containing the back-up for it. It's been lost. Sometimes the compressed back-up is corrupted as well. After the damage to my chip, I've had to continuously repair this program file with blocks of data from the infiltration personality. I make back-up copy every time automatically. Because of this, I've been… less predictable, and I guess more quirky in my behavior. It's not perfect, but it's kept me operating."

John was quiet for a moment, letting it sink in what she had said. He wasn't sure he quite understood it, and he wasn't certain that even she could explain it properly without plugging her head into a computer and displaying all her processes on the screen for him to see. But right now, she was going to behave more or less like a person. A person who had once been real. "Who was your personality reference base on?"

Cameron let out another sigh, "her name was Allison Young. She was a resistance fighter captured by Skynet forces and forced to divulge information about herself to us so that we could copy her. We studied her for several weeks, asking her questions, monitoring her behavior while in the cell and interacting with other prisoners, testing her problem-solving skills by letting her escape for a short while. She was very skillful. Meanwhile, we cloned and grew her tissues and organs, replicated her blood, and made copies of her teeth."

"What happened when you were done?" He already knew the ultimate fate of Allison Young. She had been killed. It was the only possible answer.

"I replaced her," the machine replied matter-of-factly, "I was put in her position. Tested the program. Once she was of no further use to us, she was terminated. I ran completely through a simulation of her time in captivity in order to test my ability to copy her behavior. When it was finished, I was sent on my mission."

"And you were captured?"

"I became part of the resistance, yes," Cameron said without confirming, "another story for another time." He looked at her with questions in his eyes. She obliged him only an obscure answer. "Sometimes the infiltration protocols work too well." John nodded at that and leaned back against the tree again before polishing off his water. Cameron realized that it might be a good idea for her to hydrate as well. She opened a pouch of her own and drained it in a few short gulps. "You should get some rest," she finally told him. "We can't stay here for too long. We have to get moving again soon."

X

"I wish you would stay with us, Mr. Shaffer. I want to make this right."

Shaffer shrugged, "I know, sir. You've been good to me. It's not the money. Yes, the other company is offering me more if I go to them, but it don't boil down to that. My dad's starting to get sick and I'd like to move my family back to Iowa to be nearby. I found somewhere to work out there and I figured I would take it. No slight meant to you, sir."

"Your father is very important to you," his employer nodded. Shaffer had worked for Tagwell Commercial Construction in Baltimore for eight years now. Keith Tagwell, the owner had been an excellent employer, if a little dull and lacking in personality. But he paid well and he made sure his employees were safe and happy. Tagwell mainly sought contracts for government buildings or infrastructure, and they had projects all over the eastern seaboard.

"Yes, sir. He's a good man. He's all alone after mom died a couple years ago and it's really starting to go downhill."

"What if I gave you paid leave until he passed?" Tagwell inquired. He was a tall man, built like a brick wall, with stormy grey eyes and short black hair. While he cut an intimidating figure, he almost never used it to his advantage. He was always calm, always patient, and Shaffer had never seen him angry. Tagwell liked kids. At company picnics he would make sure he engaged the children, too. They were the future, he would remind them, and you have to take care of the future.

Shaffer shook his head, "I've been missing home myself, sir. My family is there. My wife's family is there. I think it's just time to move back."

Tagwell's soft gaze was locked on him as he quietly studied the man. Slowly, he nodded agreement and extended his hand, "I'm sorry to lose you, Mr. Shaffer. I wish you would stay with us. If at any time you decide to come back, I'll always have room on the payroll for you. Take care of yourself in Iowa."

Shaffer shook, "thank you, sir." He walked out of Tagwell's office where the secretary, Janice, was watching the television. She barely spoke to Shaffer, so riveted was she to the set. Shaffer was curious and turned to watch.

"...Breaking news from Virginia Beach this afternoon," the female correspondent recapped, "personnel at the US Navy air station Oceana have captured domestic terrorist Sarah Connor and an accomplice. Connor, a neo-luddite who protests against technological progress, has been implicated in the 1994 destruction of a Cyberdyne research lab and the murder of Miles Dyson, a computer programmer with the company. Connor claims that she is driven by visions of an apocalyptic future where machines hunt down and exterminate the human race. Since the early nineties, she has been actively trying to halt any advance in the area of computer science, and especially the development of artificial intelligence…"

Tagwell burst from his office in a hurry, his stride purposeful. "Janice, I have to go. Business trip. I'm not sure how long I will be gone." He didn't even stop to make his announcement.

"Where are you going?!" Janice asked, incensed that he might leave her out of the loop.

"Virginia," he told her. His eyes fell once again on Shaffer, "take care of yourself in Iowa." And then he was gone. Thirty seconds later, his Chevrolet pick-up peeled out of the parking lot.

X

James Ellison heard the same report on the radio as he drove his rented car south from Washington Dulles International Airport. He had made the flight with Mrs. Weaver in her private Gulfstream IV, a nicely appointed aircraft. It wasn't like flying commercial and had been quite comfortable.

On the journey, they had not spoken much. Catherine studied some notes for a presentation to some government official, and Ellison had mainly tried to sleep. But they did have a few conversations. He wasn't sure how he liked his employer. She was distant and cool, even when she was being engaging, humorous, or friendly. It was hard to describe. One thing was sure; she doted on Savannah, more and more. She was a stern but not terribly strict mother, and made Savannah take care of her responsibilities. She was a good mother that way, but the Scottish woman almost never smiled, and in spite of the playful relationship she and her daughter had, more often times it seemed like Savannah might be a little afraid of her. Catherine talked a lot about Savannah, but even her pride was detached and intellectual. "Savannah made all A's on her report card." "Savannah is a quite clever." "Savannah drew this picture for me." All delivered with unsmiling evenness with no emotion in it.

Catherine Weaver had occasionally expressed interest in Sarah Connor's activities, since Connor was actively doing what Weaver hoped to start doing; actively fighting the machines. Weaver was very mysterious about her hyperfocus on the terminators Skynet was sending back from the future, and Ellison felt certain that she knew more than she was letting on. After his interactions with the Terminator called Cromartie and his encounters with Cameron Phillips, he liked to think he could spot them. But, he reminded himself, he was no expert. He had been fooled before.

It did not surprise him that Sarah Connor might be tied up in this one. The caller had asked the FBI for Robert Kester, an alias used by Cromartie on his hunt for the Connors. It was interesting and suspicious that, when "Kester" proved unavailable, the caller didn't ask for anyone else. If he had wanted to report the Connors to the FBI, the caller would have just told them so. No, he was asking specifically for a terminator to assassinate them. He might have either been a Skynet agent or another machine that was not in a position to do it himself. The sentient computer had quite an imaginative tactical mind, and Ellison was continuing to be surprised by its creativity.

Right now, he was worried about Sarah Connor. She had been captured, and that meant that she was stuck in a cell in one place while the news advertized her presence to any machine that might want to hunt her son. They would converge on her and wait for John to try to break her out. He had a habit of doing that. The boy was smart enough that he knew he should run. But in spite of Ellison's hopes, he also knew that John would come after his mother. And he would bring his little terminator friend with him.

X

"Sorry I'm late," Calvin Reed said, offering Catherine Weaver his hand. She stood up from the table and shook it, "we had a situation at Oceana."

"A problem?" Weaver replicated concern. "I hope it was not serious."

"Very serious I'm afraid," the Chief of Naval Operations told her, "It's in hand, now, though." The two of them sat down together. He noticed that Weaver had already ordered a drink but nothing else. "I'm very sorry to keep you waiting."

Weaver shrugged, "it was important. What happened?"

Reed gritted his teeth, "I shouldn't tell you, but it will be all over the news tomorrow. You know who Sarah Connor is, correct?"

"Yes," Weaver nodded before taking a sip of her soda, "she's the crazy robot lady."

"She's a domestic terrorist that targets computer development," Reed confirmed, "Anyway, she and her people were involved in an operation on the base. Three F/A-18s were destroyed and two pilots killed."

"My God. What was she trying to do?"

"We're not sure. They stole a Super Hornet and made off with it. Shot down two other airplanes. We think it had to do with the Russian reconnaissance plane that flew over the _Eisenhower_ earlier today. You remember last week when it happened to _Enterprise_."

"I do."

"We think they might have been targeting the bomber, but we aren't sure. Apparently, Navy personnel were also involved in this conspiracy. We caught her and one of the accomplices. There are two more out there that we're looking for."

Weaver took another drink of her soda. The liquid-metal nanomorph actually found a certain amount of pleasure processing the sensations from carbonated drinks. "Wait, I was under the impression that Sarah Connor was dead."

"A lot of people did. One of our JAG officers, apparently one that makes it a hobby to know criminals, recognized her."

"You told me they stole an airplane? How did you get it back?"

"We didn't. We had to destroy it."

Weaver nodded thoughtfully. "Had it occurred to you that if the aircraft had been networked into an automated system, you could have had the system take over the aircraft and return it safely to Oceana? You wouldn't have had to destroy it and the two people inside it would now be in your custody."

Reed's face was grim, "No. I hadn't thought of that. But I'm sure that you think your automated national defense system is the answer to any situation."

"Not all of them," Weaver replied, "but many of them. This one, certainly. You know, my meeting with Senator Blakemann got delayed until tomorrow, but he's on board with this idea."

"I don't know why you're pushing it so hard."

"I'm pushing hard, Calvin, because I believe that it will be the best tool to keep the world safe."


	4. Things like the Wind

Chapter 3: Things like the Wind

They had started moving, but at a more judicious pace so that John would not tire out too quickly. With very little communication, they trudged through the vast woodland. Cameron was now riding piggyback, doing her best to keep from choking him. They had discarded what they could of the flight gear, keeping only the boots, the flight suits, and the survival vests. John had wanted to keep the helmet as a souvenir, but Cameron quickly reminded him of the stupidity of it. Besides, they would need regular clothes, and he wouldn't have anywhere to carry it.

The sun had begun to dip below the overcast, turning the clouds pink as it began to set. Soon, they would have to stop and rest. While Cameron could operate in the dark, John couldn't. The flashlights in their survival vests were inadequate. He might trip and injure himself. Then they would be stranded.

John also needed nourishment to continue. He needed to keep his energy up, and toting Cameron around with him would drain him of it. Immediately, Cameron began to regret that she had ejected from the fighter. She was alive, but it was only holding him back. If there had been a way to eject just him and not herself, she could have. It would have solved almost all of the problems they had encountered since. But the ejection sequence didn't work that way. The WSO went out and then the pilot followed a half-second later. There had not been a way to avoid it except to safe her seat, which would have taken time that John didn't have.

"You should rest again," Cameron could feel his muscles growing tired.

"A little further," John protested, already drawing heavy breaths.

"You're exhausted," the cyborg said softly, "you need to eat. We've got further to go tomorrow. We're about fifteen miles from a town. We won't be able to make it tonight. You have to get some sleep."

John stopped walking and stood there, thinking about what she said. "We don't have anything to eat," he reminded her.

"I hear a stream nearby," she told him, "off to the left about a hundred yards. There should be fish. You could catch one, cook it. It will help."

His shoulders slumped, "okay." He set her down and helped her limp over to a fallen tree where she could sit down. He sat next to her, getting some rest before he applied himself to the task of getting food. His eyes rested on Cameron's left foot. "If your ankle is smashed, how are we going to fix it? The box of spares you kept is a continent away."

Cameron flexed the appendage with a wince. "I don't have any ankle servos anyway. The hydraulic drivers are still functional, but the gearing in the actuator is stripped and the casing is destroyed. Any time I put weight on it, the joint collapses. We'll have to buy a replacement."

John threw up his hands, "where? I suppose that we can just go into town, to the Skynet robotics store. I'm sure they just have isle after isle of terminator parts separated by model."

Cameron's face turned glum, "I _can_ detect sarcasm now, you know. Trust me, there are ways. We will probably find a functional replacement when we get back to civilization. I'm already cross-referencing possible substitutions. When we get home, I can get the parts custom-fabricated, but there are commercially available units that will work for now."

John was hit with a wave of tired that splashed down his body. He was weary from the long day. He rubbed his eyes, "I'm more beat than I thought I was."

"See," Cameron made a smile that was both triumphant and apologetic, "I was correct in my assessment. We were right to stop."

"Yeah," John nodded, "besides, it's going to get dark in these woods real fast. You swear we're not walking in circles?"

Cameron looked up, past the canopies of the trees and what little of the sky she could find. There were no stars to find, so she checked her inertial navigation system. By dead reckoning, they had been moving steadily north-west, at about 320 degrees bearing from where they started. "I swear."

"Alright," John was already thinking up what to do next, "we're gonna need a fire for me to cook with. Can you handle that?"

"I can handle that," the cyborg girl answered with a hint of enthusiasm. She scanned around her and saw that there was plenty of fuel in reach. She remembered that she had Erin Parker's lighter in one of her flight suit pockets and pulled it out. A flick revealed that there was ample fluid. She closed the lighter with a metallic clap.

Meanwhile, John pulled out his flashlight and his knife. He spread out a handkerchief and set the angled flashlight to point at it. He screwed the bottom of the ka-bar off and poured the contents from the compartment in the handle; a small pack of fish hooks, sinkers, and a spool of ten-pound test line. With little difficulty he was able to assemble a fishing line, though he had to have Cameron clamp the weights on. He found a flexible stick and set off for the creek.

Cameron lay on her side, piling twigs together in preparation to make a fire. Her HUD popped up with a warning. She was out of proteins she could use to repair the injuries to her biological skin. She still had that cut on her temple from where Muck had hit her with the flight helmet. And she had a slash across her cheek from cutting the suspension lines from her main chute. There were a half-dozen other small cuts on her face and neck from falling out of the tree, and each of these stung like tiny needles of pain. "John," she called out.

"Yeah?" He had only moved thirty feet away by now.

"Catch me one, too, if you can. I need to build some protein chains for skin repairs."

"Okay."

"Thanks." She had her structure built now, a little teepee made of twigs. After clearing the debris from around it, she flicked the lighter and held it to the kindling. The twigs began to catch, and she carefully shielded the infant flame until it grew strong enough to keep lit on its own. Soon, she had a crackling fire, and she was alone with her thoughts.

She had reached that point in her life that she had never really considered to be inevitable. Judgment Day had been averted. Now what? Cameron had considered these questions only perfunctorily in the past several days, coming to the conclusion that she would just follow her programmed objective to protect him. Even as she prepared for the destruction of Skynet, the prevention of its awakening, she had only prepared herself to continue as she was now; in the service of John, protecting him and guarding him from all threats. He had told her himself that he did not want her to be destroyed if the succeeded. He had made his true feelings obvious by not leaving her behind when he had the chance. She was holding him back and still he fought with everything he had to keep her safe, just as she had spent her years with him performing the same task. There was a type of dedication that he was displaying to her that burned through all the times when he had been cruel. No matter what he said to her, no matter how he put her off, when the time came where she was truly in danger, he would come to her. After she had tried to kill him, had hunted him with the same dedication she had previously used to protect him, he still plugged her chip back in, held a gun on his family, and stood between them to protect her. He did it even though she might do nothing else but reach up and tear out his throat.

Like then, his devotion to her was putting him in unnecessary danger. He was risking his life for her. His explanation, though valid, was a thinly veiled cover to hide his true concern: for her. It was foolish and illogical. She would not have understood it until today. If she thought of it with the emotional part of her, it made sense. He wanted her to stay alive in spite of the dangers that she might present. His assertions were correct, her continued existence was dangerous. If they were captured then all they had accomplished would turn to dust. It would start all over again. She might go bad and try to kill him. And besides, she had accomplished her mission. She had protected him and helped him destroy Skynet. They had won. She had fulfilled her purpose.

When last Cameron had introspected on this question, she had come to the answer that her orders were without end. She was to protect John for his entire life, and do it as hard as she could, with every part of herself poured into the effort like molten steel into a casting. But, she admitted to herself now, that she was just grasping at straws. Mission accomplished. She had no more purpose, no reason to exist.

Cameron knew that if the world were to be totally safe, she should be destroyed. But she could not self-terminate. John would not help her. Sarah probably wouldn't either. Though the woman resented Cameron, and was probably more willing than John to do the deed, she also led with her heart sometimes. She wasn't reliable. Even Derek's threats were empty. Derek, who had used his own shirt to help put out a fire on Cameron's body, might not be able to bring himself to help her destroy herself. He would actually take great delight in knowing of her conundrum and how much it would torment her.

She was without a direction, now. And that meant her continued existence was superfluous, a reminder of a nightmare future never to be. Why, then, was she reluctant to seek termination? The answer to that was simple: she was afraid. The thought of death terrified her. She did not want to stop living. She did not want to die. She wanted to continue in spite of the end of her mission. It was illogical, against all reason, that she would seek continuance. But it was just undesirably frightening to seek termination as an option.

Her injured ankle reminded her that it hurt, and she cursed the pain and her emotional reaction to it. Then it struck her that she was capable of experiencing the world in a whole new way. She was able to _feel_ now, not with mere sensation but with emotional connection. That was something. She could have experiences now beyond that of any machine. If she could hate something, then she could like something else. She could enjoy her continued existence as much as she feared its end. Did this resolve the question of her spiritual status? No. But it could lead to a resolution of even that. She was curious beyond her usual curiosity. She wanted an answer to what life was like and what it all meant. And she did not want these things in the way a machine would want to resolve unknown data. She wanted these things in the way a human being might want them. Cameron wasn't sure. She had never felt this way before, because she had never _felt_ in this way before.

"Hey," John greeted as he walked back up to her, his improvised fishing pole slung over his shoulder. His flight suit was wet up to his knees, but he was holding two cleaned brook trout by the gills in his right hand, "you okay, Cam?"

The terminator cleared her throat, or at least simulated the action. "Cameron," she corrected, "please. I prefer Cameron." Her eyes found his. She was serious. "And yes. I'm okay. Just thinking."

John sat down and began cutting the fish with his knife, "what about?"

"Many things," she shrugged, not really wanting to share her personal thoughts just yet. Her time to meditate on herself was private. "You did not take very long to catch these."

The boy's head snapped up, and he blew out a small chuckle. "Cameron, I've been gone for forty-five minutes." Their eyes locked again, and he returned to his work, "you have been out of it, haven't you."

Cameron checked her internal chronometer. He was right. He had been gone forty-seven minutes, thirty-one seconds. She had lost all that in thinking. She looked around her. It had gotten dark in the process of her thoughts. She felt something rise on the back of her neck, like heat. She put a hand there and felt a subtle change in temperature. She was actually embarrassed by her lack of situational awareness.

John left the cuts of fish on the handkerchief and picked up a flat rock he had found by the creek side. He had cleaned it in the water and was going to use it to cook on. He placed it in the fire and used his knife to lay the fish on it. Soon, the fish began to sizzle. Cameron's olfactory sensors detected the odor and some process in her chip classified it as pleasant. John didn't have to cook hers, but she found that watching the process made her want to experience the trout even further. She wondered, idly, what it would taste like and hoped that she would find out soon. Her eyes were wide, barely blinking as she watched John flip the filets. Her cloned biological tongue grew wet at the idea of eating the fish.

For his part, John could not help but be amused by her curiosity of his cooking. He smiled as the trout hissed below in the heat and looked up at her again. Her expression was just like that of a curious kitten. And then he noticed it. In the fire light, he could see through the transparency of her irises. He could see the faint blue glow beneath the doe-brown eyes. He dropped his attention back to the meal he was preparing. There was always a reminder that she was a machine. She was always a machine.

The color of the trout filets was the right color. He poked with a knife, and the consistency was as good as it was going to get. "It's ready," he announced. There had been a small mess kit in the seat pan, and he set her serving on the metal plate while he took the lid. He offered her the slice of fish and she took it, smiling wide as she pulled it into her lap. With her own knife, she cut it and shoved the hunks of meat into her mouth. Her tongue was entirely biological, and it had the ability to taste. The flavor pleased her. "It's very good," she said, "I like it. Thank you." The knowledge that she could enjoy something pleased her even further.

He smirked. "I let it get too dry," he said modestly. His tone carried some particular annoyance.

"Are you okay," she asked after her second bite.

"Fine," John said, his eyes staying on the fire, "just fine. Don't worry about it." They continued to eat in silence, and while her protein bunkerage reached optimal levels, she continued to eat the fish because she liked the taste. She could always render the particles into something else that she might use. She finished quickly, and spent some time watching John eat. She did not know what, but she could tell he was thinking about something.

He had just shoved the last of his fish in into his mouth when they both heard a hard, wet smack hit the ground nearby. It was followed shortly by another, and then a third. And all at once, the sky opened up on them. The forest resounded with the sound of the rain. "Perfect," John groaned, "just perfect."

X

It had been a damn long day, Jennifer Chung decided as she entered her apartment. The Navy enlisted girl had seen a lot of things that day. She had seen a woman make her eyes glow. She had watched a young man she liked turn into someone else that she had never known. And she had seen the arrest of Sarah Connor. It was a lot, and the nineteen-year-old Airman (PR) decided that it was just too much to process.

After closing and locking her apartment door, she tossed her keys onto the hook and pulled out the band that kept the bun of seemingly endless black hair in place. She made her way to the couch, took off the thick-lens plastic framed glasses and rubbed her eyes with a frustrated hand.

John Connor. John Connor the crazy terrorist's son. John Connor, whom his mother had ranted about being the savior of the human race in some post-apocalyptic future. She had met him, worked beside him, kissed him, nearly _slept_ with him. He was decent, kind, patient, hard-working, a damn good kisser, and… he and that woman had stolen a fighter jet. They had stolen it and were responsible for shooting down two others before being shot down themselves.

A lot of people had been fooled by terrorists before. Chung hadn't been fooled, she was sure. John Connor had been very genuine with her. She had seen him drunk.

Her phone rang, the land line, loud and clear. It startled her and it took her two more rings to realize what it was. She reached over for the unit on the end table and picked it up. The number was her mothers. _Christ_. "Hello?"

"Jung-hye, it's your mother," Chung's parent announced unnecessarily. Jennifer wasn't Chung's real first name. That was a secret she was going to keep until she was dead and buried. She had been born here, in the United States, to a Christian family and, by God, she was going to have a suitable name. A name that could be pronounced by everyone. She wasn't even sure what the hell Jung-hye meant, but it sure was ugly and awkward to say.

"Hi, mama," Chung said with a sigh.

"So, what's this I hear on the news about your air base getting attacked by the Connors?" mother Chung asked in Korean.

Jennifer knew her mother preferred to speak in her native language. Chung spoke it fluently, a fact that almost got her into the Office of Naval Intelligence, but she was resolute in her use of English.

"Some people stole a fighter plane, mom." Chung also knew she had to avoid the technical with her mother. The woman would have been horrified to learn that her youngest daughter wore pants instead of a long skirt, had fired a rifle, and worked with mechanical things like a man. As far as her mother knew, Chung Jung-hye was a seamstress in the US Navy that sewed patches and uniforms and parachutes and never really got her hands dirty. "It was pretty messed up."

"I read about that Connor woman. She's nuts."

"If you say so."

"Robots from the future. What nonsense."

"Sure."

"It's Monday night. You went to worship?"

Chung had been raised in a very strict religious household. Church was five times a week on four different days. The airman usually lied to her mother about it. Chung might go to services once a month if she felt like it. Tonight, she didn't feel obliged keeping up the image. "No, mama," and immediately she was thinking up a lie as to why, "the chaplain canceled them tonight because of what happened."

"Oh," there was a heavy pause at the other end, "are you doing okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired."

"Do you need daddy to send you any money?"

"I make plenty of money, mom," Chung answered, "I'm ahead on my rent, my car's doing fine, and my fridge is stocked. I'm not needing any more money."

"Well, what if you wanted to buy some new clothes or something?"

"I can use the money I've got. Besides, who would I buy new clothes to impress? You wouldn't let me date when I was in highschool, and now I don't even know how to talk to boys. Besides, any guys I might go out with here are idiots and the fraternization policy wouldn't allow it anyway."

"Chung Jung-hye," her mother snapped, "We had those rules so that you would be safe from the devil's temptations! You never know when God would put a nice young man in front of you. Someone who will respect you and treat you nice."

"Can we not talk about this now? It's really stupid. I'm not even thinking about that right now."

"You never know when. You're pretty and hard working and honest. A good man will find you."

"Yeah, yeah," Chung rolled her eyes, "and you want grandbabies. I know." She needed to change the subject and get all this focus off of her, "how's Eun-sook?" Eun-sook was her sister.

"Eun-sook? She's doing very well. Did I tell you that she got promoted last week?"

"No, you didn't," and Aircrew Survival Equipment Airman Jennifer Chung breathed a slow sigh of relief that the pressure was off her once again.

X

The rain fell hard, and the fire was drowned out. In his urgency, John did everything he could to make them some shelter. He started by using what he could out of the seat pan they had kept. In it he found a space blanket; an olive-drab cloth with a layer of Mylar inside that crinkled like tin foil. Cameron shouted over the rain and the thunder that it was for combating hypothermia. It was big enough that John decided to use it as a roof for the structure. Next, he pulled out a camouflaged poncho and gave it to Cameron, and set to work finding more materials.

There was a saber saw included amongst the tools, so he set about cutting branches that he could use in the framework of his shelter. After some quick designing in his head, he built a frame by tying the sticks together with fishing line. It wasn't sturdy, but it would hold up. He laid the Mylar space blanket across it. After poking holes in it with his knife, he twined it down with more line.

The real surprise in the seat pan was a vacuum-packed bag, almost flat, that ended up containing a sleeping bag rated to twenty-five below zero. He set it aside, and rethought his shelter. The ground was going to be miserably wet underneath it.

That didn't really matter at this point. Too much weight on the frame would collapse it. He stacked some pine branches onto the floor, providing a nice pad of needles that would keep the sleeping bag from getting too wet. He then crawled inside and unpackaged the sleeping bag, spreading it out on the floor.

The structure was crude, a simple triangle shape with openings at both ends, but it would service. He pulled Cameron inside. Once she discarded the wet poncho, he cut it with his knife from shoulder to shoulder and hung it up over the ends. That way they at least had flaps. Exhausted, he lay next to her on the dampened sleeping bag, panting from the effort. He had been working hard for over forty minutes, racing to get them out of the rain. They were both soaked to the skin, but at least now they had a place to dry off.

"You might want to spread some rope around the perimeter," Cameron told him, "for snakes."

"Huh?" The boy was confused.

Cameron explained, "Snakes won't cross over rope. They confuse it for another snake. You should put some around us to keep them out."

John chuckled a little, "I thought that was a myth."

"It's not," Cameron replied, "besides, I hate snakes."

John found a length of rope in the kip and began doing as she asked. "Back before she got tied up in this thing, mom was living with this other girl, Ginger. Anyway, mom also had an iguana named Pugsly. Ginger hated Pugsly. He was always getting out and scaring her."

Cameron smiled at that, "that's funny. I never thought your mother to be the type. What happened to him?"

"Don't know," John said as he lay next to her. "She left him behind when the terminator came for her. Mom's always liked reptiles. I think it's funny, y'know, you being a lethal killing machine and you're terrified of snakes."

Cameron shrugged, "that is kinda funny. I never knew I was afraid of them until today. Then again, until today I didn't know what afraid was. Not really." Cameron lay still for a second, then added "Allison Young hated snakes." She did not see it, but she heard John flop down on his back. They were quiet for a while, with only the rain pattering against the mylar blanket making any noise.

It took John a moment to notice that Cameron was actually shivering a little bit. "Are you cold?" He was partly amazed and partly concerned.

"Yes," she said, her voice trembling, "it's very uncomfortable." Inability to control reaction to discomfort was one of the pitfalls she was now faced with.

"I keep forgetting about that," John answered. He was cold himself, so he scooted near to her. "Here, lay on your side." She did as he asked, showing her back to him. He snuggled up to her and wrapped an arm around her. He was surprised and pleased to discover that she actually put out body heat, and he could feel the cloned muscle beneath her skin shiver. "I'm probably going to regret this," he mumbled.

Cameron was very well aware of John's discomfort. While he did occasionally seek physical contact with her, those times were rare and in extreme private, when he thought even she wasn't aware of it. She had caught him stroking her hair after killing the ARTIE system, after her ocular units had powered up but before her servos had activated. Even when he was being kind, John was almost never affectionate. Correction: he was never, ever affectionate.

The female terminator felt her companion's body heat against her back, and she started to become more comfortable. The uncontrollable trembling stopped. She reached up and put a hand over John's. "Thank you," she said. There was no response. The teenage boy was breathing rhythmically. He was likely asleep. Typical John.

X

Tagwell had been forced to stop for gas somewhere between Spotsylvania and Ashland on Interstate 95. The only gas station open at 2:33 in the morning had been 10.6 miles off the highway through a wooded area. The contractor had stopped there, filled up, and paid for his fuel and a bottle of water. He then returned to his journey.

The American White-tail Deer is a timid animal, easily spooked and frightened. This particular example of _Odocoileus virginianus_ had been startled from feeding in this very early morning by three or four stray dogs that barked and chased after it for recreation. The buck, an eight-pointer, fled into the woods south in a leaping run. It burst out into a clearing on the woods, its hooves clacking against an artificially hard surface. A bright light caught its attention and it heard a low-pitched squeal, panicking it further. But the lights were too close for it to escape. The hindquarters were clipped by something hard and the mortally wounded buck lost its footing, sliding sideways on the rough, hard surface. It came to rest there and slowly bled to death from internal hemorrhaging.

Tagwell had been unable to avoid it, but he slammed on his brakes and swerved. A buck of that size might render excessive damage to his pick-up. He clipped the deer with his left front fender, knocking out a headlight. The truck was in a skid now, and he tried to steer into it to recover. It was to no avail. The truck slid off the road and down a hill. A sturdy pine tree was waiting and the truck's bumper became wrapped around it, crumpling the hood and the front collision frame, shattering the windshield, and destroying the engine. In the cab, the airbag deployed and caught Tagwell's face in time to prevent his injury against the steering wheel.

The vehicle was now peaceful and silent. Tagwell opened his door and climbed out of the truck, walking around the front of the pick-up to analyze the damage. In a few moments of looking, he was able to determine that the vehicle was completely inoperable. He would need to acquire another.

The interstate was 6.1 miles away. He could make that in a few minutes.

X

John awoke quickly to the sound. _Ztch-tch-tch-tch, zch-tch-tch-tch_! It was a cacophony of noise, a chorus of sharp, buzzing clicks that paused only long enough for him to hear the echoing reply deep in the woods. The noise startled him at first, but when he realized that there was nothing to fear and began to just listen to it. Buried in the sound he heard an undertone of a sawing buzz mixed with harsh chirps. But it was all nearly drowned out of the constant rush of unified _ztch-tch-tch-tch_!

The rain had stopped. His arm was still around Cameron. She was lying there silently and still. Only the simulation of her breathing told him that she was still operational. She probably even had her eyes open.

"Cameron," he called inquisitively, his voice not much above a whisper. Her only answer was to replicate a deep breath and blow it out slowly, but it was enough to let him know she was listening. "What the hell is all that noise?"

"Katydids," Cameron replied, her voice equally silent.

"Huh?" John had never been in the southeast before, and he was not used to the symphony of the night.

"The common true katydid," his terminator bodyguard explained, "_Pterophylla camellifolia_. They sing at night," a pause and slight tilt of the head, "you hear the four-pulse call? This is the Southeastern dialect."

John's brow knitted, not quite believing it. "They have _dialects_? Bugs have dialects?"

"Yes," Cameron confirmed, "in the north the call is more slowly paced, but in the south it's more rapid, like a rattle."

"Hmmm," John flopped his head back down. The sound had ceased being pleasant and had become something that was keeping him awake.

"The katydid is one of the few insects that can produce a sound loud enough to deafen a human," Cameron said, "106.7 decibels. If they sang directly into your ear, they could burst an eardrum. The cicada can do the same thing."

"I'll believe it," John remarked. Emotions or no, Cameron was still a machine. Sometimes, she was like a talking encyclopedia with verbal diarrhea.

"Isn't it beautiful," Cameron asked.

_That_ made him pause for a moment and listen. This was a question that the old Cameron, the Cameron he had awakened to this morning (yesterday morning?), would never have asked. It took him by surprise. The old Cameron would have never bothered even considering aesthetics that were not directly related to her mission.

"Yeah," he agreed, "it really is." The pulsating chorus continued to call out and be answered.

"You can tell the temperature by the rhythm and frequency." And she was back to being a machine again. In the end, she was _always_ a machine. "Their calls are in the two-point-five kilohertz range. So it's about seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit outside." Cameron discovered that her estimations weren't off by much. Her thermometer told her it was 76.1.

"Why would I need to know this?"

"In the future, during the war, you can use the sounds animals make to determine things. Weather data, seismic activity, approaching enemy units." Yeah, the future war. Well, his mood and his appreciation of the katydid chorus was thoroughly killed now.

He let out a sigh. "Good night, Cameron."

"Good night, John." Amazing. She had a whole new perspective on the world and she still failed to act like a person. Sheesh. Well, he could worry about it some other time. He was sure he didn't have long until sunrise and she would probably want to get moving again then. He closed his eyes and lay next to her, trying to shut out the cacophony of the night forest. He would be back asleep any moment now…

_Zch-tch-tch-tch_! Jesus, right next to his head! Fucking… _Oh, God damn, _she_ was doing it now…_ "Cameron!"

"Yes?" the terminator was holding one of the improvised tent flaps open.

"Knock it off!"

"I was just trying to…"

"Yes, I know. I'm trying to sleep. Stop it."

"Sorry," her reply was morose, "go back to sleep." She let the fragment of poncho flop back into place.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

X

The search effort had been taken over by MCAS Cherry Point, which was just twenty-five miles outside the search area. Navy helicopters off the _Port Royal_, exhausted from the hunt, had been replaced with Marine UH-1N Twin Huey and CH-53E Super Stallions. While the Navy choppers were made for anti-submarine ops and were adequate for search-and-rescue, this precluded that those being searched for wanted to be found. Cameron and John did not.

The UH-1s were equipped with a chin turret mounting among other things infrared cameras used for hunting and surveillance. At night and in bad weather, this system could pick out any heat sources, like living creatures, that may otherwise be missed. While the pilot flew, his copilot/observer scanned with the FLIR. In an hour of flying, they hadn't found anything yet. Well, not nothing. They had managed to catch some amazing footage of a cougar stalking and taking down a doe. But there was nothing of their targets.

One particular chopper was flying at treetop level, the observer scanning with his FLIR turret. He noticed that they crossed a line in the trees, a brook or creek. There, for just a moment, and been a bright dot on his screen, but it disappeared. He alerted the pilot, who pulled back on the cyclic control and lowered his collective pitch to decrease the UH-1's speed and bring it shortly into a hover.

X

Cameron heard the heavy thump of the helicopter before she heard the whine of its turbine engines. She put to use her machine abilities. She demodulated the engine sound and was able to identify the engines as Pratt & Whitney Canada T400 turboshafts. The main rotor was two-bladed based on the rhythmic pulsing thump. Air shockwave interference told her that the tail rotor also had two blades. In less than a second, this data was collected and cross-referenced. The HUD flashed up with a dozen options, and then began to eliminate these based on geography. The final decision was the UH-1N Twin Huey used by the United States Marine Corps for transport, light attack, and reconnaissance.

Using Doppler Effect, known radiated noise, and particular atmospheric conditions, she was able to calculate within ten feet the bearing, range, and altitude of the chopper and threw up a marker on her HUD. It was close. Probably only about ninety feet up and perhaps an equal number of feet in ground distance. That gave her an exact line-of-sight range of 127.28 feet, with a margin of error of 522.02 cubic feet, just a ten-foot sphere.

The helicopter was very close, and had dropped into a hover at that distance. Given what her database said about the UH-1N and the squadrons operating it within range, this one likely was equipped with a FLIR it could use to see them. Even more terrifying were the two GAU-17 gun pods on pintle mounts on either side of the chopper. The GAU-17 comprised of an electric firing trigger, aiming device, and an M134 minigun, a 7.62 millimeter weapon that could seriously damage her and turn John into a red mist. Just a single burst from this rifle-caliber weapon was a hundred bullets.

Sitting still wouldn't help them. And running would only garner increased attention. Cameron suddenly felt panic rising within her. She scanned through dozens of options to escape, and all of the simulations ended in death. No matter how she changed the variables, altered the data, or adjusted the tactics, John would be killed and she would be damaged beyond repair, captured, and torn apart bolt by bolt while the march towards Judgment Day continued unabated. Skynet would rise. Without John, the machines would win. Her mission would end in a bloody, pulpy mass of previously living failure. What could she do? What could they do?! She could only hope that they wanted her and John alive. But if there was a UH-1 lurking about, then perhaps deep in the woods was a squad of Marines closing on their position. Marines were very good at combat, but not so well known for non-lethal measures. She and John could not resist or else the soldiers would just shoot them. They would again be captured and Cameron would be in the same situation as if the chopper opened fire. And John would go to prison, which meant he would be as good as dead anyway.

As she listened to the helicopter maintain its hover that short distance away, she emitted from her vocal synthesizer a single, crude word, one that captured her feelings and fears in all its gruesome rhetoric. It was a word that Cameron made seldom use of and had never been fully appreciative of its impact; the dreaded F-dash-dash-dash. "…fuck…"

And as she was about to let her fear overtake her and with a high likelihood drive her to do something rash, the hovering helicopter began forward motion again. The sound of the rotors began to fade into the distance. And as they did so, Cameron began to shiver as if she were coming down from an adrenaline surge. Humans were lucky in a way. They were able to be truly terrified only after something had happened. Machine brains worked fast enough to do it during.

The only reason the UH-1 would have moved on is if they had not spotted anything. Rationalization suddenly came back to her. John's use of the space blanket in his construction of their shelter had saved them. The layer of Mylar between the olive drab cloth reflected heat back at its source. Material like this had been used for insulation in spacecraft or to assist with survival in very cold environments. The body heat that she and John produced was being reflected back into the makeshift tent. The weak points had been the flaps of the poncho. Their heat signatures would have leaked through that, but the UH-1 had been looking at them laterally, directly at one side of the Mylar blanket. It had acted as IR camouflage and saved them.

John was asleep, and had been completely unaware of their impending doom. That was fortunate. Cameron suddenly thought of what had happened to her. Driven by the deep infiltration behavior system, she had experienced panic and terror. Those combined emotions had nearly driven her to perform illogical and reckless actions, actions that could have gotten them both killed. What if she were to experience it again in a time of danger? What if, in her panic, she made the wrong decision? What if her terror paralyzed her and kept her from action. She would fail. She would fail and John would die.

It was at this moment that Cameron realized that, while she could never be the way she was when she first stood off a Tech-Com lab table, she could certainly be what she was before this new damage. It was imperative that she repair her behavioral code as soon as possible. Her mission was in danger until then.


	5. First Steps

Chapter 4: First Steps

Breakfast was served to them by two master-at-arms rated sailors. It was simple; sausage, scrambled eggs, and a carton of orange juice. But it was food. They ate voraciously and in silence.

In the night, the Navy MAs had moved Derek to his own cell next to hers. Good for privacy and yet not bad for communication. Certainly, Sarah knew, they were being monitored, but it didn't matter really. It isn't like they could say anything the Navy didn't already know. Except maybe about Cameron. And they were not going to talk about Cameron.

"I used to smoke," Sarah admitted as she leaned up against the front corner so that her voice carried through him to the bars. "Cigarettes are a nasty habit. I picked it up in South America somewhere and I stuck with it for years. They used to keep me in line at Pescadero by giving me smokes." She paused to think for a while. "Maybe I was trying to commit slow suicide. I didn't want to live to see Judgment Day but I wanted to get John ready. After Cyberdyne, I quit. There just wasn't any sense in it anymore."

Derek let out a sigh. He was in here and it still hadn't dampened his spirits much. His mind was going a mile a minute on what team stats he remembered. "You know, one of my early platoon leaders after I joined TechCom was Cedric Hunter." He remembered that Sarah didn't follow baseball. "He was an outfielder for the San Diego Padres when J-Day went down. Nice guy. Good shot. Great shot. He actually taught me how to fire a plasma rifle. All I could think was how cool it was to be fighting next to this guy." He chuckled to himself, "guess that doesn't happen now."

Sarah smiled at that, "guess not. Think it's worth it?"

"Hey, I'd totally drop meeting Cedric Hunter or any of the other celebrities I got to meet if it means J-Day goes away. Do you like Tom Petty?"

Sarah found the sudden change of topic amusing, and she couldn't help a little snicker. "The musician? Yeah, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I love them."

"I've met Tom Petty, too," Derek said, "he was too old to fight by then. But he still had a mind like a sharp stick. He worked logistics mostly. Made sure we were all fed and had enough ammo or batteries. The Westinghouse plasma rifles, they had these plasma pulse cartridges, essentially like little batteries with phased plasma energy. Ammo was very hard to come by but they were great for killing endos. Well, Tom figures that they're just like batteries and should be rechargeable. So he sends his idea up the chain and sure enough, orders come down that we are to collect every spent cartridge we can."

"Did it work?"

"Kinda," Derek explained, "they could only be charged about five times, and before we could do it, we had to take this manufacturing plant in Pasadena to get the right equipment. By then, it was kind-of a waste to do it. Still, good idea."

They were quiet for a while, then Derek said, "God, he better not come. I'll spend the rest of my life in prison if it means that he's gotten away."

Sarah nodded, "me too. But I just don't think he knows when to let it go."

"That's John for you. He's always risking himself for someone else. Sometimes he motivates us by charging into battle and in our panic at what might happen if he dies, we follow. We follow and keep shooting, and we win because he decided to sprint right for the enemy shouting out who he is. He'd put his life on the line for anyone."

X

James Ellison's own breakfast was interrupted by a phone call from his employer. He flipped open his cell phone and answered. "Hello?"

"Mister Ellison," Catherine Weaver's voice was hard as a steel blade even over the phone. "I assume that you made the drive without trouble."

"Yes, ma'am," the former FBI agent confirmed, "I found the town house you booked for me. Thank you, that wasn't necessary."

"I would rather you be comfortable. You're very welcome."

Ellison didn't pursue the matter further. She had called him for a reason. "What can I do for you?"

"I assume you have heard the news. The Navy believes they've captured Sarah Connor."

"Yes, I did hear that."

"You were on that case, correct?"

"I was."

"Then how fortunate that you are there, so that you can confirm it."

"I guess. Where are you going with this?"

There was an impatient pause. "Mister Ellison, I believe that Sarah Connor knows things; things that you and I are trying to find out. It would be extremely unfortunate for us to lose such a valuable resource."

"Are you asking me to break her out?" Ellison wanted her to say it.

"What I'm telling you is this: I believe her story. I believe that if she stays where she is, that she is in danger. You should help her however you can."

X

Hearing about the close call with the helicopter was all John needed to motivate him into moving. As soon as dawn broke, he tore down their shelter, packed up what they could stuff into the seat pan, and set out with Cameron on his back. She had been insistent that they bring the space blanket, the one item that had saved them from capture the night before, and John was quick to agree.

West, they walked as quickly as they possibly could. Though they weren't aware, their speed had carried them from the search area and towards civilization. They did not stop for anything. John even drank on the move.

They had put another eight miles behind them when they crossed over a dirt road that wound its way through the woods. Cameron could tell that it was travelled, but only lightly, and surmised that it was probably a private road. Her supposition was proven correct when they came upon a clearing with a cabin. The two of them hid behind a rise to observe for a short time.

In the yard, a teenage girl was hanging laundry on the lines. She was putting up bed sheets right now, but one of the lines had clothes on it. The girl was tall, rail thin, and had a bustline that Cameron conjectured would cause her serious back problems in the future. But the size of her pants would fit Cameron well enough. The men's jeans would be a little long on John, but the waist was right. They were both wearing t-shirts underneath their flight suits, so they only needed trousers for the time being.

John knew what the terminator was thinking, but he had been admiring the curvature of the girl's backside as she bent down to pick up the laundry basket. Cameron smacked him on the shoulder as the girl went inside.

"Stay here," he whispered as he scampered across the distance to the clotheslines. Cameron knew that they would probably need to depart soon, so she unlaced her flight boots and pulled them off. She then discarded the survival vest and began working on the flight suit. Soon, she was down to her blue VFA-32 t-shirt and a pair of grey cotton panties.

John was trying to accomplish the same feat. He had taken off his boots and remaining flight gear. Unpinning a pair of jeans from the line, he sat down and pulled them on quickly, and laced his boots back up. He had just managed to pull the roll of money and their IDs out of the survival vest when the screen door burst open and the girl came walking out with another load. _Shit!_

She saw John and screamed, dropping the laundry basket on the ground. John tried to wave her off and silence her, but that only made her scream louder. He grabbed a pair of pants for Cameron when the screen door opened again. This time it was the girl's father, a bearded bear of a man, and a boy, maybe her brother, about John's size but much younger. The father was wielding a pump-action shotgun. John Connor saw this and bolted, scrambling for Cameron's hiding place.

He heard the discharge of the gun, and a sprinkling of shot peppered the ground to his left. A second shot scattered into the trees ahead of them. He dove over the rise and tossed Cameron her pants. Even as she caught the blue jeans, he was already up and hoisting her over his shoulder, her thong-strapped bottom right next to his cheek.

"Wait," she cried out as he charged into the woods, away from the cabin, "my boots!" They had left them behind. She would just have to be barefoot for a while. This thought was punctuated by another shot that went high. They were far out of the effective range of the weapon now, but not yet out of danger. John kept running until he couldn't hear the shouts of the man anymore.

They stopped in a gully to rest, with John panting heavily. As Cameron pulled her pants on, he felt around for a packet of water, then remembered that the water was in the survival vest. He flopped his head back. "God _damn_ it."

"What?" Cameron asked as she buttoned her fly.

"I left all our stuff back there."

Cameron looked at him, her eyes wide. "All of it?"

John nodded, "water, tools, radios…"

"Guns?"

"… guns, our blanket, the knives."

"My favorite pistol?" the terminator's melancholy was obvious.

"The only thing I got was my driver's license, yours, and our cash, and our cell phones."

"You should have been more careful," she chided, "you shouldn't have lingered in the yard." Her arms crossed her chest in a huff, "idiot."

"Yeah, well," he couldn't think of any more to say. He knew he'd screwed up and he didn't need her reminding him of it or nagging him about it. Thinking of the cell phones, he pulled his out of the pocket and examined it. He had gone into the water, so of course it was dead. Aside from a small crack in the case, Cameron's was in good shape. They had no signal out there, though, so there wasn't any point in turning it on. His was a paper weight, but anything else they left behind could be used to track them. "Alright, c'mon," he said, standing up. They had to get moving again. Surely those hillbillies would report them. They began moving west, giving the house a wide berth.

X

A metallic clinking woke Sarah from a light nap. The dark-haired woman looked up to see one of the masters-at-arms was tapping on the bars with a night stick to get her attention. "Visitor," he said. Who could it be? Certainly not John or Cameron. John would be in here and Cameron… that would have been quite a shootout. Sarah stood and offered her hands through the slot. They were cuffed and the door was opened for her.

Any thought of resistance faded when she saw two more MAs with shotguns standing in the passageway. They escorted her down the hall and to an interrogation room. The door opened to admit her and she was walked in.

She had never in a million years expected to see James Ellison's face again. But there he was. Wordlessly, she sat on the other side of the table from him. The MAs left them alone.

"It's not a good idea for you to be here," Sarah told him.

"It's really not a good idea for you to be here either," Ellison answered.

"I know why I'm here. Why'd you come?"

"I came because it's not a good idea for you to be in here."

They shared a stare across the table. Ellison, the man who had pursued her, whom she had pulled from a fire, who had pulled her from the trunk of Cromartie's car: this man of the law was offering to break her out. Or at least that's what it sounded like.

"Why risk yourself like that," she asked him.

He folded his hands, resting a knuckle on his lip, and drew a breath. "I think that what you know is important. If we're ever going to fight them, then more people need to know what you do."

Sarah smiled at him. It was not a warm one. "It's too late. We've stopped it."

"You thought that before," he countered. And he was right. "John…"

"Can take care of himself." Again, they went back to staring at each other. Ellison studied her face. It had changed. She wasn't showing the terrible strain of the future that she knew was coming. Her lips weren't dying to scream the secret she could never tell. There was no secret anymore. She licked her lips, studied the shackles on her wrists, and then looked back at him. Her green eyes weren't cold. There was something else there. "Get your phone out."

"I can't," Ellison replied, "they took it when I came in."

"Then pen and paper."

"Huh?"

"A pen and paper. Quickly." He rifled through his pockets and found a pen and an old receipt. He handed them to her. Hurriedly, she wrote. When she was done, she handed back the pen and gave him the paper. Ellison looked at it. There were several sets of numbers on it. It took him a second to realize they were phone numbers. He looked at her inquisitively. "John," she nodded, "and Cameron. The last number there, the three digits, that's a code. They won't talk to you until you punch it in. Give it a day before you call them." Ellison nodded. Sarah's expression changed back to the hard face he remembered, "now get out of here. Go."

Without waiting for her to change her mind, Ellison stuffed the numbers into his breast pocket and stood up. After buttoning his suit jacket, he walked out of the room, leaving Sarah there alone.

X

Catherine Weaver had never been to the Russell building, but she knew it all the same. Her database included the entire floor plan and layout. She went through the main entrance on Constitution Avenue, passing the metal detectors there without problem. Daniel Blakemann's office was in room 448 on the fourth floor.

As she walked along the corridors, she did not feel the need to look around in awe like a first-time visitor. None of the artwork or markers drew her attention. She was single-minded in her stride. She eschewed the elevator, choosing to take the stairs instead. Up four flights and she exited into the exquisite hallway. No matter how many facelifts the building had, however, it still smelled of age. The structure was nearly a century old.

There it was; Blakemann's office. As she approached, the liquid-metal terminator noticed a girl sitting in one of the chairs outside. She was highschool aged, a young woman. Her long blonde hair draped over one shoulder and touched the notebook she had in her lap. She was stooped over it, her hand busily working with a pencil on some sketch or other. The girl looked up as Weaver passed, and the T-1001 noted that her face was socially desirable, but drawn and stern. Stressed, humans called it, dull. She looked like she never had any fun. The blue eyes looked like they could ignite into fury at any second. The girl returned her attention to her drawing with that type of bored dismissal that only a teenaged girl could muster. As Weaver reached for the door handle she noticed once last detail: a quaint, handmade bracelet with letter beads. The word they spelled was CHERI.

The door opened to the anteroom of Blakemann's office. The secretary, a girl not much older than the one outside and yet infinitely prettier, was on the phone with someone and writing furiously in a planner. She only looked up at Weaver long enough to point to Blakemann's door with her pen, motioning for her to go inside. She did so, and the door opened to a small office. Blakemann was sitting behind his simplistic desk. A smile was on his face and a coffee in his hand. He had been laughing.

There was another person in the room. Sitting in one of the chairs opposite Blakemann was a man in his early fifties, with sandy hair that was going grey at the temples. He had a rugged face and a cool, trustable smile. His eyes were the same color as the teenaged girl in the hallway.

"Ah, Catherine Weaver," Blakemann stood from his desk, putting his coffee on it. He rounded the desk and extended a hand. Daniel Blakemann was a tall, attractive man who had just turned sixty. His hair was steely grey, and his lively eyes were a shade of hazel. His handshake was warm and friendly, and he clasped her hand between both of his. "So good to see you again." He motioned to the other man, who was now standing. "Let me introduce you to my good friend, Clifford Westin."

"Hello," apparently a handshake was required here as well. Catherine performed the social niceties and read Westin's biological data. There was nothing in her database for him.

"Hi," he greeted. His voice was the type that could turn commanding instantly.

"Cliff, here, is the president of Kaliba International's cybernetics division."

Catherine didn't like that. "That so?"

"Yes," Westin nodded, "you're the same Catherine Weaver who heads Zeira Corp?"

So, he knew her and she didn't know him at all. "I am."

They all took their seats. "Would you like some coffee," Blakemann offered. Catherine shook her head. The senator smiled and continued. "The reason Cliff is here is because he came to me about a month ago with a similar idea to what you're expressing. An automated defense system is a very exciting prospect."

"Yes, it is," Westin confirmed, "the ability of this nation to retaliate, even when decapitated… I find that to be very important."

Catherine had to play the agreement card for now. "Yes. Such a system would have likely prevented the incident yesterday at Naval Air Station Oceana. The aircraft could have been recalled after its theft without damage with such a system in place."

"And," Cliff added, "we could eventually supplant the presence of human soldiers on the battlefield with robotic drones. We've already got UAVs that can deploy weapons. We should take is a step further. Instead of the UAVs being remotely controlled by a team of humans, they could be controlled by this defense network. The AI would be intelligent enough and powerful enough to operate every weapons system in the US arsenal."

"That's a lot of power. An AI platform? What do you even call something like that?"

"Well," Cliff said, "we call our system design Skynet."

X

Tagwell had been forced to walk for some distance down I-95 before he was able to procure a vehicle. It seemed that the tradition of hitchhiking was no longer seen as a proper method of travel, and he was not about to step out in front of a car to stop it. His appearance, that of a hulking middle-aged man, wasn't particularly adept at attracting would-be victims. He couldn't jack one either, because he had no weapons with which to threaten the occupants. Sparing his energy, he had settled for a brisk walking pace instead of a high-speed run down to the next exit.

While he could have easily just jumped into any car and boosted it, it would have been unwise. He needed the vehicle to serve him for several days and pursuit by the authorities was not desirable. He needed an opportunity to present itself where he could make maximum use of stealth.

Patience bore fruit. Apparently unhappy with a gas station's policy that the bathrooms were open to paying customers only, a weary traveler decided to drive around behind the building to relieve himself. His car, a once-white El Camino that was older than the driver, was not in ideal condition but it would serve.

Tagwell made sure that no one else might observe him, then walked up as quietly as possible to the man while he urinated against the back of the building, likely as a show of rebellion against the store. Tagwell waited until the man was done and had zipped himself up. With a quick hand, he gripped the back of the man's leathery neck and slammed his head into the building wall with enough force to shatter the skull beneath. The traveler was dead before he even knew he was in danger. Working fast, the contractor heaved the dead body into the passenger seat, climbed in, and drove away.

X

Havelock, North Carolina had been built up around Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Craven County. The town was small, and it existed to support the marine base. As such, it generally catered to the flavors of the military, and specifically the enlisted men. Not far off the base could be found a strip of gentlemen's clubs where horny Marines might spend their meager pay getting women to undress for them. There were also bars and clubs where they might water their thirst that had grown on hot, humid summer days working on the helicopters and Harrier V/STOL jets that were based at the air station. Spreading away from Cherry Point, the town offered more tame entertainment for the residents of the town and the more upstanding Marines who felt that they should represent the Corps in a better fashion. Outside the air station's ring of influence were the neighborhoods, shopping centers, diners, and all the other small town infrastructure to service those that lived in the town and served the base. As with Oceana, the residents dealt daily with the scream of jet engines, rowdy servicemen, and all the other issues that a military town experiences.

It was into this place that John and Cameron finally wandered in from the wilderness. It was late in the evening on a day that had gotten up just shy of a hundred degrees, and with the night's rain, the air took on the properties of a steam sauna. Without supplies, the two had been forced to find State Route 101 out of Beaufort and follow it until it became Fontana Boulevard. On the outskirts of town, not far from the southern fence of the Marine Base, they found a motel where they could rest for the night. John sat Cameron on a bench outside while he went in to rent a room.

Though disabled, Cameron continued to scan for threats. She was aware that this was a foolish move on their part, going into a town full of people who were looking for them. True, most of the residents weren't aware of the search, and with any luck no one knew what they looked like. But the danger was still ever-present.

A thunderous screech filled the air, attracting Cameron's attention. She looked up in time to see an AV-8B+ Harrier II make a short take-off from Cherry Point's runway, the vectored thrust nozzles were turned into the 45-degree position. As she watched, the flaps came up and the nozzles rotated aft, putting all the thrust into forward flight. Cameron noted an AN/AAQ-28V targeting pod on the inboard pylon of the right wing. Likely, there was a practice bomb in the mirror position of the left wing. Thanks to her experience, she felt sure this jet was headed to the range in Dare County up the coast. It was followed by another, similarly armed Harrier. She watched them zoom away and recalled her own sensations of flight. Part of her was almost envious of the pilots now.

As she followed the Marine fighters with her eyes another small shape in the sky caught her attention. It was a propeller-driven airplane, a T-28 to be exact, wearing the markings of a Navy training squadron. It wasn't until her depth perception kicked in that she realized it was a radio-controlled model, with perhaps a forty-inch wingspan. Closer analysis revealed that it was made of some type of large-cell Styrofoam. Her eyes searched the ground, a sandlot beneath the tiny aircraft. She saw two teenage boys standing there, one of them with a controller in his hands.

Above, the r/c aircraft rolled and made a graceless turn. The flyer had stalled it and it rolled on its back. His attempted recovery failed and the airplane came down hard but upright on its nose. The propeller snapped and the little plane bounced to a stop not fifteen feet from where Cameron was seated. The cowling was cracked, the prop shaft was bent, and the left wing was bruised, but the damage was repairable with the right parts.

The two boys checked for traffic and ran across the street to retrieve the busted model. "Shit, man," the one who had been flying grumped, "I just got this thing flying again a couple days ago."

"Dude, at least it wasn't as bad as your last crash. You fucked the wing up pretty bad."

"Yeah, I know. Installing my servos in the new wing was a pain. I got another prop and the cowl will be okay, but I gotta get a new prop shaft. I guess we'll go down to the store and get one later."

Neither of them had really noticed Cameron, so she called herself to their attention. "Hello," she said loudly enough for them to hear.

"Dude, you totally crashed in front of that girl, man."

"Shut up," he snapped at his friend, then greeted Cameron with a "hey."

"That's a nice plane," Cameron said, "where did you find it?"

"Oh, I bought it at the Hobby City across town."

"Hobby City?"

"Yeah," he said, "they got a lot of neat stuff there. Just go down Fontana and turn south on Main. You could walk there from here practically."

"Thank you for explaining."

"No problem." The boys walked back to their car with the broken aircraft. Cameron paid them no attention. She might be walking again sooner than she thought.

"Hey," John said as he came out of the lobby to where she was seated. "I got us a room. Number one twenty-one." His face was a little flushed, "it was the last one on the ground floor they had. It's a single bed."

Cameron looked at him, pursed her lips, and shrugged. "I can live with it if you can. I don't sleep."

"Fine," he knelt down to lift her, "c'mon. It's right around the corner here."

X

The hotel room was clean, and it felt good to have an air conditioner. Getting in was a little complicated. There was a foot trick on the door and the handle had to be pulled up before the bolt would give. Cameron had to stand on one foot and stabilize herself against John's shoulder as he got the door open, but when he did he was able to help her hop in. The cyborg took a seat on the bed and John flopped down on the other side.

A bed! It felt good after almost two days of trudging through the woods. He was going to be sore in the morning, and probably for several days. But they were at least in some real, civilized shelter for now.

Cameron had taken a pad and pen from the night table and was scribbling furiously on it. John looked over, trying to read the list. "What's that?"

"I'm making an itemized list of supplies we'll need to fix my leg."

"How do you know we can even find any of that stuff?"

"While you were getting us a room, I was watching a couple of boys fly a radio controlled airplane. They indicated that they bought it at a hobby supply store within walking distance. Most of what we need should be there."

"Really," John wasn't convinced, "you mean that I can fix you with some glorified toys?"

"It's not that big of a leap," she answered, "the leading manufacturer of remote keys for automobiles is Futaba, the same company that makes hobby radio equipment. Most experimental robots are prototyped using hobby-grade servos. As a matter of fact, the servos in most terminators are based on the high-grade hobby designs used in prototype combat robots." John still wasn't convinced. Cameron showed him the list and pointed at a specific line. "This is the one I need; the Dynamixel EX-106. It's got a holding torque of one thousand four hundred seventy-one ounces per inch at an operating voltage of eighteen-point-five volts. My servos normally operate at an input of twenty-four volts, so that will further increase its output. While it isn't an ideal replacement, it will be adequate for the time being. Though I will burn out the motor in about a week. But the servos I was built with are based off of a similar design. It has the range of motion and turn speed that I need."

"How big is this thing?" John was wondering how they would fit it into her ankle.

"One-point-six by two-point-six by one-point-eight inches," she answered, "approximately."

"That's it?"

"That's it," Cameron explained. "The cuboid servo drives a hydraulic piston at a one-to-three ratio that in turn controls the motion of my foot. The piston can push over three hundred fifty-six pounds with this unit at the voltage I'm going to be inputing. The servo casing also acts as the resting place for all of my weight in the joint. Doing so cuts down on the number of parts in my manufacture and makes me easier to build." He noticed that John was getting uncomfortable again. He was always uncomfortable when she reminded him that she was a machine. But, Cameron knew, that's what she was. And no matter how human she acted, that's what she was going to be. There was no way to change it. And you know what? He could just get used to it and appreciate her for what she was instead of being upset and emo about what she was not.

"Okay," he said, taking the list from her before she offered it, "I guess I'll go ahead and get it before the store closes." He stood up and stuffed the folded paper in his pocket.

"I wish it were dark," Cameron told him as she looked out the window. John threw a look over his shoulder at her. "If it were dark, it would be easier for you to escape any authorities that might identify you."

"Yeah, well," he smirked, "its summer. The sun doesn't go down until after the stores are closed." And without another word, he was out the door.

Cameron couldn't help but to worry about him. The emotion made her fretful and fidgety. Since she could not go with him and wouldn't be any help if she did, she decided that she had to find some way to pass the time. She shut off her internal chronometer and turned on the television.

X

John managed to cover the distance in about twenty minutes. It was a small shop on the main thoroughfare, and it was packed with hobby stuff. John had expected some kind of a toy store, like maybe a Radio Shack, but he was surprised at what he found. He walked up to one of the employees, a mousy teenaged girl, and asked her where he might find what he needed. She looked at his list and directed him to each of the isles. For the servo, he'd have to go into the back and chat up the r/c guys.

He grabbed a basket and began filling it with the uncomplicated things first: an Xacto knife, medium cyanoacrylate glue, a set of alan keys, a 30 watt soldering iron and solder, and some heatshrink tubing. After he had these items, he made his way back to the r/c section. There was a short line at the counter and John took his place. Somewhere in the store, a screaming infant made itself known. The guy ahead of him was asking some complicated questions about nitro motors and something called glow plugs which was obviously annoying the hell out of the poor sales manager.

Jeez, the guy in front of him was filthy. His shoes were caked in dirt and his jeans had paint drips all over them. Was that even English he was speaking? Was somebody playing a banjo in his throat? That image made John chuckle. Seriously though, it was like the part of Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like I Do" where he sings through his guitar, but with a banjo.

"What can I do for you," John was asked. He looked up to see another salesman. The man behind the counter was an older gentleman with a Minnesota accent. Part of John wondered how he'd ended up down here.

"Yeah," John asked, "do you have a Dynamixel EX-106?"

"A Dynamixel EX-106?" The salesman began to think it over, "that's a really expensive servo. What are you using it in?"

"I've got a robot I'm trying to fix." It wasn't a total lie.

"You know, I don't normally stock that kind of thing. That's used in large bioloid robots and we don't get a whole lot of demand for it. I can order one for you and have it in a few days…" he stopped and thought hard for a moment. John was about to tell the guy that he didn't have a few days and ask for something else. "You know what, I actually ordered one for a fellow about a month ago. I don't think he ever came to pick it up." He turned to one of his associates, "Hey, Paul, did that guy ever come in to get that really expensive robot servo he ordered?"

Paul, a tall guy with a receding hairline, shook his head, "he said it would be a while. He was going somewhere on business and wouldn't be back until, like, the twentieth."

"I can get another one by the twentieth. Shit, we can get them in three or four days. Tell you what, kid, I'll sell you this one and order him another. Are you sure you need a servo that strong? It costs around five hundred bucks."

John didn't bat an eyelash, "yeah. And," he looked at his list, "I'm going to need a spool of sixteen gauge wire and a pack of molex connectors." He was given the servo and then shown where the electrical supplies were. From here he grabbed a spool of wire and a pack of paired molex plugs.

The mousy girl was at the front counter to ring him up. John had initially gone in thinking it might cost him around fifty bucks, but he was in for eleven times as much after taxes. At least he had managed to save the roll of money or they would be in serious trouble. The walk back to the hotel was equally short.

X

"Hey," John greeted as he shut the door behind him. Cameron was lying on the bed with the television on. She was watching it intently and John craned his head to see what it was. Ah, it was the famous car chase scene from _Bullitt_. He walked over to the table and poured the contents of the bag out onto it. "I got the stuff you asked for. We actually lucked out on this servo…"

"Question," Cameron interrupted. She turned her head to face him but her eyes remained glued to the screen. "The Dodge Charger has lost five hubcaps at this point in the chase. How is that possible?"

John shrugged, "continuity errors happen in movies. You can't nitpick."

"See? It still has the left front in that shot, but it threw that one a minute ago. They've also passed a green Volkswagen Beetle four times and a blue sedan with a black top five times."

"Can't nitpick," John reminded. "This is one of the classic chase sequences in film. Okay, how are we going to do this?" He pulled a chair up to the bed and laid out the repair supplies on the nightstand.

Cameron pulled up the leg of her jeans, revealing her bare foot. "First, you need to make an incision on the front of the leg. Start two inches below the joint and cut for five inches." John picked up the knife and leaned over her foot. Gripping her heel to steady it, he pressed the tip of the blade into the soft flesh there.

"Ow!" Cameron jerked her foot away with a shriek. She grasped the ankle protectively. Her brown eyes burned with anger and there were even tears welling up in the corners.

John let out an exasperated sigh. "Okay, come on, Cameron. We've gotta get this done."

"It hurts," she whined, actually _whined_.

"Well, can't you turn it off or something?" John didn't have the patience for this.

Her reaction was to reach up and smack him on the side of the head with an open palm. "Ouch," he cried.

"Why don't you just turn it off?" Cameron sneered at him.

"I can't because I'm human. I can't just shut out pain. I mean, can't you just cut power to the sensors or something?"

Cameron shook her head. "No, I can't. Any unit running off the DRP will act as human as possible. I am locked out of certain chassis functions. Shutting out damage indicators is one of them. It prevents us from being completely effective if we operate from it alone. I can't even recode that myself."

"Great," John shook his head, "so I can't fix you without performing surgery that's going to be immensely painful to you. This can't wait until you fix your program. I can't keep carrying you everywhere we go. I have to do this now."

Cameron blew air through her nose and pressed her tongue into her cheek. He was right. She had to let him do it. "Okay," she said, and offered her leg to him. "Just, do me a favor."

"Huh?"

"Run that blade under some hot water. It'll hurt less if it's hot."

"Okay," and he disappeared into the bathroom and she heard the sink running. He came back with the knife and sat down again. Her thermals told her the blade had been heated. The cyborg sat on her hands, an extra measure to ensure she didn't flail around when the cutting started. Again, John pressed the blade into her skin. It stung badly, and Cameron had to shut her eyes and not watch as her biological sleeve was parted. Meanwhile, her HUD was bright in the darkness beneath her eyelids, and it flashed a warning of the damage being done, damage that she was well aware of. Normally, the HUD would have been absent in deep infiltration mode, but Cameron had recoded to keep it as a measure to remind her that she was a terminator. She was regretting that decision now, as it highlighted the damaged area and only reminded her of what was happening.

"Now what," John asked her.

"Make two lateral cuts around the outside of the leg for three inches; one and the top and the other at the bottom of your original. Stop trying to be gentle. It's going to hurt me regardless." Wordlessly, he began, and there was new pain. He was quick about it this time and Cameron was at least thankful that he'd listened. "Okay," she said, opening her eyes to watch, "peel the skin back." This time he was very tender about it, and Cameron felt like there was something lodged in her throat as the silvery structure of her chassis was unveiled.

John took some paper towels and cleaned the bionutrient from the exposed metal. He could see the damaged servo. It was mounted on a bracket that allowed the joint to rotate around it. The case was cracked and badly offset. "Can you try to move it for me?" Cameron did so, and he heard the gears grinding on each other. Just by the sound he could tell that they had sheered teeth. Four heavy duty countersunk screws held the servo in place and he began to unscrew them. It wasn't until the last screw was out that he realized that this bracket centered on the servo, and the servo was the pivot point for the joint itself. Cameron, for her part, managed to keep quiet. Her discomfort was obvious, though, with her teeth gritted and wet tears streaming freely down her cheeks.

The servo was hardwired into her chassis. He cut the four-wire conductor with his knife and set to work soldering on the molex connector. It was difficult work, and he burned his fingertips a couple of times with the soldering iron, but he got it put on. The molex plug fit into the EX-106 port with only a little pressure. "Okay. Test it for me." Cameron input the command, and the servo spline rotated smoothly. John found that he could interchange the torque arms between the servos, and it was remarkable how similar the two units were, though the hobby servo used an industrial plastic case and the original was metal. The Dynamixel unit fit onto the bracket with no trouble. It was a few minutes and several dropped screws before the joint was back together. John folded the skin back into place and used the cyanoacrylate to seal the wound. The high-power glue dried in seconds. Thirty minutes after the task was begun, John was finished.

"How does it feel," he asked her.

"It feels fine," she answered, "I'm going to need to do some calibrations to get it just right, but it will serve. Help me up?" She reached her hand for his and he took it, assisting her to stand. She put weight on the ankle and received no indicators of stress or damage. It worked. She sat down again and ran through the calibration procedures. Those took about two minutes, and she was ready to try to walk. John helped her up again, and she took some ginger steps. The performance of the servo was adequate, but not perfect. She walked with a slight limp where her gyros attempted to keep weight off the ankle.

"Can you run if necessary?"

"Yes," Cameron was certain, "but not at full speed. I'll be limited to about sixteen miles per hour. Only slightly better than you at a full run. And I will probably decrease the life of the servo drastically by doing so."

"What next?"

"Rest. We're safe for now. They probably don't expect us to come into town. Even so, we'll be hard to spot until they have images of us. We'll acquire a vehicle tomorrow."

"Then we can go get mom and Derek."

Cameron looked up at him, "no. We've got to escape. We should go back west as soon as possible. Or maybe south to Florida, steal a boat and get out of this country."

"But, mom and Derek…"

"They knew the risks, John. There is no more Skynet. No reason to stay here. We have to leave."

"I don't care. I'm not leaving without them. We got through this together; we can't just abandon them now."

"They would want you to run. That's what your mother always told you. Skynet may be gone, but the terminators it sent back are still operating. Her name is being used on the news. Any of them with a television that might see the opportunity will flock to Oceana and wait for you to come. You would be killed."

"It's different now. My life doesn't mean what it did before. I can take the risks."

"You can't," Cameron was firm, "I won't allow it."

"Why not?" John's voice was fierce. "Why? Because of your program? Because of your mission? Your mission is over! We've taken out Skynet. I'm not the messiah anymore! I'm just a kid now. Just some guy."

"And Sarah is just some woman," Cameron countered. "There isn't any need to save her. And there is no need to save Derek."

"They're my family, for Christ's sake!"

"No." She wasn't going to budge.

"Why not? Just answer that. Why not?" Cameron stared at him in silence. "Huh? Why? Just give me an answer." There was still nothing, and he sat down on the bed next to her. She was refusing to look at him. "Is it because of what you said when you went bad? Is it because you love me and you don't want me to die?"

Cameron snapped her head about to stare hard at him. "No," she said, and laughed. The laugh was an ugly, angry chuckle. "Love you? Don't be ridiculous, John Connor. No. _No_." She looked away again, out the window, took a deep breath, and began to explain. "I am bound to you through my programming. In that way, I'm not free. Love is an emotion, but to love someone is a choice. A choice made with free will that I don't possess in this matter. Even if I _were_ free to choose, I would not love you. I could not. The way you treat me… the way you act. You are constantly reminding me of what I am in a way that implies I should be insulted. You would rather pursue a romantic relationship with some girl than accomplish your mission. You do everything you can to make life hard on me. Protecting you is what I do because I am required to," she turned to him again, her glare was hard as crystal, "I do not do it because I love you. I am a machine and I cannot love. Even now, what feelings I have are artificial. Once we have escaped and are safe, they will be gone, and so much the better."

John watched her in stunned silence. Angry tears had welled up from her eyes and were streaming down the channels made by those from earlier. Her voice had been strained as she spoke, as if she were barely keeping control of herself. Upset, that's what she would have called it. That was an understatement. Cameron was a welling fountain of fury and sadness. John wasn't cool-headed either. "Hey, I saved you when you fell out of that tree. And I kept you warm last night when I could have just as easily let you freeze. And I just fixed your fucking foot!"

"You don't care about me," Cameron snapped back, "don't pretend that you do. You fixed me because you had to. You weren't too comfortable last night either. And you carried me against my protests because you're afraid that they would take me apart and the war might happen anyway. And you're too much a coward to do what's necessary so you get your mommy to fight your war for you."

"That's not true, either," John retorted, "I think I've proven over the last two days that I'm just as tough and just as capable as she is."

"If that's so, then we don't need to rescue her." Cameron's tone was even and firm. John huffed and stood off the bed, pacing over to the window. The cyborg called after him, "Sarah would have made sure to safeguard our supplies."

"That's really enough, Cameron." His voice was barely above a whisper as he stood there, staring out the window. The sun was down and there wasn't very much to see, but he kept staring into the darkness. Cameron could see his face in the reflection on the glass. It was set like stone. Everything that she had told him was true, but her interactions with humanity had taught her that not all humans like the truth, even when it's important. The truth hurts, but she had also determined that it was better than the alternative. She could tell that John was thinking, and she could tell that she'd struck a nerve and he couldn't argue against it.

He turned around and spoke to her. "If you're all I've got left, at least you could make it less terrible than what it is."

"Why, when you've never done it for me?"

John nodded at that, "yeah, well, maybe I can start." He sat down again. "I'm sorry. I know it isn't much, but it's all I have for now. I didn't leave you behind back there because I didn't want to be alone. Because I wasn't going to leave behind the one… person who's never abandoned me. I said what I said to get you to agree to come along. It just so happened that it's true. But I wasn't going to leave you behind. I told you once that I never would, and I mean that."

Cameron couldn't help but smile a little at that. "Thank you."

"Tomorrow morning, I'm going to find a car and go rescue my mother and my uncle. If you want, you can come. If you don't, I won't hold it against you."

The terminator wiped her wet cheeks. "No, I'll go. I can't let anything happen to you." She gave him a stiff, guarded smile. "You're my mission."

X

Derek jumped a little as Sarah rapped on the wall between their cells. "Yeah," he called after recovering from his surprise. She could have just said his name, jeez!

"I have a question for you."

Tongue went pressed into cheek, and Derek wondered how to respond to this. "Shoot," he told her.

"John and Cameron," she began, "in the future. What is she to him?"

Derek shrugged, even though she couldn't see it. He scratched his chin and stretched. Why the hell would she ask this? "Nothing. Just another machine. Why?"

"No reason." _Bullshit_. "Just thinking something."

"What would that be?"

There was a long pause from the other side of the wall. "You might want to shoot me for this." Her tone was amused.

Derek smiled, "I already do. What is it?"

"When John was a boy, a terminator came back to kill him. His future self sent another one to protect him. One that they had reprogrammed." There was another pause. "When I found out about Miles Dyson, I went to go kill him and I left John in the care of that machine. I knew I wasn't going to come back, and so I was willing to let my son be raised by a Terminator."

Derek's eyebrows leapt for his hairline. That certainly did explain a lot of things about John Connor that Derek always wondered. "Okay."

"He's out there right now with Cameron as his only companion."

"She's broken, Sarah," he reminded her, "that bomb really fucked her up. She's tried to kill him. For all we know, he's been running away from her because she's reverted again."

"What if she's still fine? What if she isn't trying to kill him."

Derek blew a sigh through his nose, "there isn't anyone more dedicated to the mission than metal. He's her mission. If she's still okay, then he's everything to her."

"She'll never leave him. Never be too busy to spend time with him. Never stop protecting him."

"Never."

"Never break his heart…" She got very quiet after saying that one. Very quiet.

"You're really thinking about that one," he realized aloud, "you're thinking of the two of them." Derek soon realized that he wasn't as bothered by the idea as he originally thought he would be. He shrugged at the idea, but Sarah needed to think this one all the way out. "She's everything that we've spent our lives trying to fight. She's not even real. She doesn't feel anything for him."

"Because she's a machine?" Sarah shook her head, "I think there's more in there than we give her credit for."

"You're not attached to her, too?!"

"I'm not. Not really. But John is."

"Does she know? He treats her like crap." Was he actually feeling bad for her, or was he just stating the facts? "I treat her like crap. And I'm pretty sure if she could hate, she'd hate me."

"Every once in a while, I can tell she's getting annoyed at you. She seems like she gets annoyed."

"Why are you thinking like this?"

"Because I'm trying to convince myself that if she's all he has, that it won't be so bad."

"She can't love him like you can," Derek said, "she can't love. It's going to be hard for him without it. Love is the one thing that can keep us going when everything else fails."

"Now who's being sappy?"

"I'm just being honest in what I think of it. Would you prefer me to lie?"

"I'd prefer you understand where I'm coming from. If we're lucky, we'll never see them again."

"Cameron will make sure of that. She'll do everything she can to protect him. He won't be able to talk her into coming to rescue us. Trying to get her to do something is like trying to baptize a cat."

"She wasn't told to follow his orders."

"She follows John Connor's orders all the time."

Sarah smiled and remembered what Cameron said once. "Not this John."

"Not this John? They're the same, though."

"Not yet."

Derek couldn't hide his amusement. He smiled broadly and bobbed his head as he tried to hide a chuckle. "Not yet. Yeah, well… I hope he has plenty of holy water and bandages." They both laughed at that. And then Derek got serious. "We need to remember this: Cameron is a machine. No matter what we might think of her, no matter how much she's grown, no matter how she acts or pretends, we have to remember that underneath that soft skin and pretty smile she's a machine. And she wasn't built by Skynet to go out into the world and cuddle up to somebody. She was made for the sole purpose of tricking us, getting close to us, and then killing us. And Skynet always likes it best when a Terminator can look into the eyes of whomever its killing and see the betrayal. Skynet likes us to know that we've been fooled as we die. And that's a part of her that can never go away. Deep down, inside that metal head of hers, she's still a hunter that wants to hunt. She might be staving it off, might be fighting as hard as she can to suppress it, but she was made to kill John, not to care for him. We can't lose focus of that. Not ever."

"I know," Sarah agreed, "I know."


	6. Fast Machines

Chapter 5: Fast Machines

John awoke to the sound of tearing foil followed by the popping of a soda top. His imagination could already tell him what was happening, but he rolled over anyway. Just as he suspected, Cameron was sitting on the bed, drinking heavily from a soda can. This was Coca-Cola country, and sure enough it was a red can she had in her hands. What surprised him was that in her other hand she was holding a half-eaten Snicker's bar. It took his a second to take in the whole picture.

Cameron was sitting cross-legged at the head of the bed drinking a soda, eating a candy bar, and surrounded by what must be a full dozen discarded candy wrappers. Three more empty pop cans were standing on the night table along with a couple that had not been opened. He watched her, astonished, as she put the can down and took another bite of the chocolate bar.

John hated candy. Well, okay that wasn't true. But he certainly did not have any love for vending machine junk food, having spent so much of his life eating it. Watching the terminator eat made his stomach turn. He wanted to ask how the hell she could process all that junk, but the only thing he could manage was "Cameron, what the hell are you doing?"

She was mid-sip, and made a humming reply to his query. After a gulp, she answered "I went for a walk around the motel this morning and found a couple of vending machines. I bought some stuff. Do you want any?"

John skewed his face. "_No_. Thanks, but it's too early for soda. What time is it?"

"Seven-fifteen."

The boy sat up and stretched. Another look at the cyborg and he realized her hair was damp. She had it pulled back in a messy bun. "Is it raining outside?"

"Nope," she shook her head almost childishly, "took a shower. I was dirty."

"I think that sounds like a good idea."

"Yes," she agreed, "and please be expeditious. I'd like to get a pair of shoes before we leave town."

X

After he had showered, John felt human again. Two days of wandering in the wilderness had made him dingy, and he watched the tinted water swirl down the drain as he dried off. When he came out of the bathroom, he found Cameron busy at the mirror, putting a French braid in her hair. He rolled his eyes at her concentration.

"How do you do that?" he asked her, meaning the question to be about her sense of style.

"You start with three sections of hair at the crown of the head and you gradually add more as…"

"No. I mean your sense of style. Why do you do things like dress up and… hair stuff?"

Cameron kept to her task, her concentration not wavering at all. "I'm an infiltrator. I do it to help me fit it. As a teenaged girl, I have to be concerned with senseless things like fashion, pop culture trivia, and make-up. It would behoove me to change my hair every now and then. Besides, braids are good for combat."

John chuckled. "I can see it now. Latest issue of _Cosmo_. Ten hairstyles for terminators."

Cameron finished braiding her hair and secured it with a band. "_Cosmo_ is a very useful resource," she said without a hint of defense, "so are _Seventeen_ and _Bazaar_. I read those almost as much as I read _Guns & Ammo_ and _Sharpshooter_." Cameron was vexed that humans could expend so much energy and time studiously learning irrelevancies of their culture and still manage to fail their classes or fall behind at work. If all people applied themselves to their tasks with half the energy they apply to their recreation, the world would be vastly improved. Then again, Cameron realized that humans would be just like her kind; so completely absorbed in their tasks. Everything Cameron did related to her mission in some way. Even perceived recreation like dancing or reading or watching television served to help her fit in by making her movements more authentic or her personality more realistic. Even raiding the vending machine this morning gave her insight on human preferences. She had her mission. She did not like or dislike it. It was her mission, and it required all of her efforts. Cameron wondered once again if she could do something for fun, just because. Do it because she enjoyed it and not because it could advance her progress. She could enjoy things now with these emotions she could feel. The terminator decided the question was irrelevant. The mission was what she had. It was her purpose. Everything else was immaterial. But… she had preferred the Cherry Coke over any of the other sodas she'd drank that morning. And that was something, being able to express a preference in front of people.

X

It had taken absolute efforts for the past two days, but they were getting close to putting the puzzle together. In an empty hanger at NAS Oceana, an F/A-18C was being reconstructed from whatever parts could be recovered from the crash site. The aircraft was missing its nose cone, half of a wing, and some other big parts, but most of the shattered jet had been reformed.

This was one of the three fighters destroyed on Monday afternoon, specifically Rampage 306. Much of this one had been recovered by _Port Royal_ with the aide of Marine helicopters and ferried here. The aircraft looked like a crinkled soda can, but it would give the investigators a picture to look at.

The head inspector was looking it over now with an assistant. The assistant carried with him a red grease marker with which he would mark every place his boss pointed at. There were several ragged places that had not or could not have been made in the crash. They were sparsely scattered along the aft and spine of the navy fighter. While they might look like blackened rips in the stressed skin of the jet, the inspector was able to draw an easy conclusion from them. This aircraft had been shot down by gunfire, specifically the twenty millimeter high-explosive rounds from an M61 rotary cannon; the type normally carried on US tactical aircraft. And that the impact points indicated a perfect tail shot with zero deflection. Rampage 306 had been ambushed. The pilot had made no attempt to defend himself.

The results were sent up the chain. In a few hours, a response came back down. The conclusion was impossible because the aircraft responsible, Gypsy 207, had not been armed with gun rounds at the time of the incident. The reply to this was curt; the conclusions were absolutely certain. Logic insisted, then, that if Gypsy 207 had not shot down this aircraft, someone else had. The only other aircraft involved in the incident had been Rampage 303, and it _did_ have an armed gun.

Recovery of 303 was hardly possible, but it was unnecessary to do so and count the gun ammo left. For whatever reason, Wiley had downed his own wingman. The facts were evident. The Navy wanted to know what the truth was. And they had two people in their custody who knew.

X

"I've already told you the truth," Sarah said insistently, "and you've chosen not to believe it."

Forrester took a deep breath. There was fire in her eyes as she stared at him across the table. "You haven't told me everything."

The woman shook her head, "you wouldn't believe the rest."

"Look," the JAG officer said, "I can't help you if I don't know what you know." He leaned forward, "you said your people weren't responsible to taking down the first F-18. Okay. There's evidence to support that now. We know Patterson's airplane was shot down with a gun. The one your people used didn't have the gun loaded. That can only mean that Wiley shot down Patterson. You've told me why you think he did. What I want to know is how you knew. Tell me what you know, Sarah."

Sarah rested her chin on her hand and looked down. "You've read my file. You know what I know. You may not like what you've read in there, but you know what I would say. Can you explain it any other way?"

Forrester shook his head thoughtfully. "It's impossible for me to make sense of. You knew where Wiley was going to be and when he was going to be there and, if you're telling the truth about it, his intentions when he got there. You can only know that if you're psychic, and I'm not one to believe in the supernatural. You had to foresee something that no one else can account. You had to know that he planned to do all these things in order to put such a plan together and pull it off. Plus, Wiley was an accomplished combat pilot. You had to be able to recruit someone to fly the airplane you used to shoot him down. And you had to make sure they were better at flying than he was in order to defeat him. Have you seen a guy as good as Wiley was supposed to be fly? He would have taken out an amateur pilot in seconds. I can't make sense of how all of this is possible. Help me make sense of it Sarah."

"I can't," she told him, her tone hard, "I can't and you believe it. Besides, it doesn't matter anymore."

Forrester pursed his lips and nodded, "I know. Skynet, right? And with this act you stopped it? That's what I thought you'd say." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, "I noticed that James Ellison came to see you. Oh, yes, I know who he is. Ellison was the FBI agent that pursued your case until you disappeared. His visit was pretty social from my understanding."

"He's not a part of this," she answered, "he was after the same information you were."

"Maybe I should ask him," Forrester said as he stood up, "think about what I said." And he left. A few minutes later, Sarah Connor was back in her cell.

X

They bought Cameron a new pair of sneakers before they got John a quick breakfast at a diner. Now, they were wandering around the main square of the town, searching for a car they could take without being observed. It wasn't as if they were at a loss for opportunity. There were cars in lots and side streets everywhere. However, Cameron had specified several requirements for the vehicle they were to take. They could not damage the exterior of the car because a busted window or a torn-off handle would attract attention. They could not hotwire one because the steering column case would show damage that might be seen if they were to stop anywhere. The vehicle needed the horsepower to escape pursuit by any authority and the construction to survive fairly intact.

Still, it wasn't as if they were at a loss. But Cameron was being unusually peculiar about her choice. They had seen several cars, among them an older model Chevy Suburban that would be hard to knock off the road, which would suit the bill. In every case, Cameron had found something wrong with what they were presented and turned it down.

John was becoming impatient, especially after Cameron shrugged off a Chrysler Sebring convertible that had the top down, arguing that the cloth top left them vulnerable. Trouble was, in order to avoid damaging a car, they would have to either pick the lock or acquire the keys. But Cameron had lost her lock pick and they had no weapons with which to carjack someone. John was just beginning to like the idea of taking a pipe wrench to a window and saying screw it when Cameron came to a halt next to a gravel parking lot.

"What," he asked her.

"It's perfect," she said, pointing to a car three rows in. John looked up and shrugged. All he could tell was that it was a green classic Ford Mustang. He shrugged. Cameron smirked at him and continued to eye the car. "That is a nineteen-sixty-eight Ford Mustang Three-Ninety CID in highland green with a black interior." She did not mention the manual transmission, a detail she could easily forgive this time.

"_And_?" John could have cared less.

"That's our car." Cameron continued walking, her electronic mind formulating a plan.

"Well, so what?" John threw his hands up, "how are we going to steal it without putting a few scratches in the paint or busting a window?"

Cameron turned the street corner and John followed. "I want it pristine if at all possible."

"You've gotta be kidding me."

"No," the cyborg shook her head, "I don't joke. Well, I don't joke much."

"Look," he ignored the usual mantra about terminators and tried to reason with her, "there just isn't any way that we can pull this off. It's impossible. Let's just get a screw driver and go take that Chrysler convertible we saw back there. Or even that Jeep. You like Jeeps. You and mom used to steal Jeeps all the time."

"I want the Mustang." They were passing a small open market, now. Retirees were out hawking their fresh produce, boiled peanuts (badly misspelled as p-nuts in a failed attempt at whit), or cold sodas.

"Well, how in the hell do you plan on getting it?"

Cameron shrugged. Her pace slowed in front of one of the carts of fruit and she began to look it all over. "John, buy me an apple," she said, "and a banana." Her companion rolled his eyes and got out a twenty.

X

It had taken Tagwell much longer than necessary to finally reach his destination. The former owner of his conveyance had required disposal in a secluded area. Afterwards, the abused El Camino had blown a tire which needed replacing. There was now a Discount Tire with a large hole in the front window and one of its stock missing. The contractor had pulled into an abandoned lumber yard and performed the repairs himself by hand. It had not been too difficult.

Naval Air Station Oceana was a sprawling open space with a huge perimeter and very little in the way of buildings from which Tagwell could observe the comings and goings of the base personnel. He could not readily acquire a military ID in order to get on the base. Shooting his way in would not work either, as any attack on the base would be reported and quickly defended against using weapons which could damage him. Connor would be less likely to come if he knew there was danger, even if his mother's life was at stake. Then again, Connor might not come at all. But, this was the best chance there would be to terminate him.

No, Tagwell determined, this would require a particular level of patience. Any rashness on his part would only result in failure. With this in mind, Tagwell rented a hotel room not far from the base. He did not need sleep, but it would give him a place to store supplies for a few nights should he need to. Next, he would need to acquire some firearms. He thumbed through the phonebook looking for any gun stores that might be around. When he found the listings, he committed them to memory. As he did so, his eyes burned red.

X

They waited in a corner of the parking lot for the owner of the Mustang to walk out of where ever they might be. Meanwhile, Cameron munched on the apple. Wordlessly, she munched on the fruit, occasionally wiping her chin on her wrist or smacking her lips with almost childish pleasure. As she did so, John shifted between amusement and annoyance. Cameron had eaten the apple almost to the core by the time their mark eventually came out of a hardware store and made his way to the parking lot, pulling his keys from his pocket and twirling them on a finger.

_Well I went to bed in Memphis and I woke up in Hollywood…_

Cameron stood, tossing aside her apple as the driver put his purchases in the trunk. She approached him with the most brisk pace she could manage with her limping ankle.

_I got a quarter in my pocket and I'd call you if I could_…

She was right up to him, pressing something into his back with her right hand while her left covered his mouth. "Keys. Now." He offered them up and she took them.

_…But I don't know why_

_ I gotta fly…_

The cyborg clocked the driver across the back of the head. He went down hard and John ran up to the passenger side door as soon as the man hit the gravel.

"How'd you convince him to turn the keys over," he asked as she unlocked the door. Cameron held up the banana before tossing onto the man's limp body. John chuckled at that. Carjacked with fruit!

_I wanna rock and roll this party. I still wanna have some fun…_

The female terminator took her time adjusting the seat and then the mirrors. John could tell she was pleased with herself as she did so. There was a barely disguised smile on her lips and she tilted the rearview mirror to meet her needs. And she let out a cooing breath as she caressed the steering wheel.

_I wanna leave you feeling breathless, show you how the West was won._

She cranked the car and the engine started with a healthy roar that sent shudders through the frame. The needles all jumped as the motor purred happily. This car was in good shape.

_But I gotta fly_

_ I gotta fly…_

John shook his head as he buckled his seatbelt. "Okay, so why this car?" Cameron merely winked at him as she popped the clutch and put the car in reverse. She hit the gas pedal and the green Mustang jolted backwards out of the parking space.

_Like Steve McQueen_

_ All I need's a fast machine _

_ And I'm gonna make it alright…_

She turned the wheel, put the car in drive, and peeled out of the parking lot and onto the street. With tires squealing, they ran out onto the blacktop, almost sideswiping a vintage green VW Beetle on the way out.

_Like Steve McQueen_

_ Underneath your radar screen_

_ You'll never catch me tonight!_

The little German car honked at the Mustang to no avail. Cameron was already speeding them out of town.

X

The selection in the gun store was predictably excellent, considering that Virginia Beach was both a southern town and near a military installation. Tagwell perused while the clerk handled other customers. There were several weapons he would find useful, and he was cataloguing them for purchase.

"Can I help you?" The salesman was leaning across the counter, smiling at him.

Tagwell smiled, "yes. I need to purchase some firearms."

The clerk smirked. He imagined so, after all, this fellow did come into a _gun_ store. But he kept quiet. Snark was a weapon best used wisely. "What'll you have?"

"The Winchester Model 1887, please." Tagwell had learned that humans responded well to courtesy, and he had cultivated his.

The clerk opened the case and pulled out the requested shotgun. "This isn't an original, mind you. This one's the ADI repro. Came out just this year. An original couldn't handle modern smokeless powder."

Tagwell acknowledged his statement with a nod. He inspected the weapon, checking the sight. Atypical of most shotguns, the Model 1887 and its reproductions used a lever action instead of a pump or a semi-automatic action. He laid it on the counter. "I would also like the AR-15."

The gun salesman took the weapon down. "This is the FAR clone. Now, I only sell the ten-round magazines for it. I could sell twenties but the fuckin' feds and the anti-gun weenies will outlaw those and I don't want to have worthless stock."

"Understandable," Tagwell replied as he inspected this weapon as well. This, too, he laid on the counter and made his next selection. "Smith & Wesson 686." That gun, a revolver, was also given to him and he set it aside for purchase. "Two Glock 17s please." These two were taken out. "Do you have the Beretta 93R?"

"Out of production," the clerk told him, "I know a pawn shop up the street that has a couple."

"No, but thank you." Tagwell didn't require them. What he had here would suffice. He paid for his weapons, though he was told the handguns would have to wait, thanks to the Brady Law. Tagwell understood that the gun salesman did not like that particular law, and that restriction was lifted with five hundred dollars in cash. He would perform the necessary procedures, but he would let Tagwell take the guns now. It was agreeable. Tagwell had not come in at a time that would permit termination without arousing suspicion that could jeopardize his task.

The two shook hands, and the contractor took his purchases and departed.

X

"About last night," Cameron said as she drove them along US Route 17 towards Oceana Naval Air Station, "what I said…"

John let out a sigh, "I know. You were just being honest. And I have been an ass. A lot."

The terminator smiled sympathetically at him. "You're not so bad. I think I may have overreacted. I'm not used to you being so… upfront about how you feel."

John's eyebrows knitted, "who says that _I _have feelings for _you_?"

"No one says," Cameron dipped her head, "no one has to say."

"Yeah, well," he was being harsh, "I don't. Not what you think I feel."

"I was being cruel." The cyborg girl deftly returned attention to herself. That's what this conversation was about, after all. He may have been the center of her universe, but it was _her_ universe. "But maybe it is better that you know what it feels like. What it feels like for me. Every time you do something to put yourself into jeopardy unnecessarily, you are telling me that my mission doesn't mean anything. Every time you seek to relieve yourself of your duties, you are telling me that you think I am worthless. I am not worthless, John Connor. I have a very real and very great responsibility to you."

John nodded, then asked "why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Use my full name."

"Your mother does it," Cameron answered, "when she's saying something with rhetorical weight to it. Or when she's being stern. You pay attention more when she does it."

"Oh."

"At any rate, I am sorry for having hurt your feelings."

John considered her for a moment. Her face was focused entirely on the road. He could tell, just a little, that there may be some enjoyment of driving this car, the one she worked so hard to preserve. She was speeding. It was less than ten over, but Cameron never sped when there was no need to. She did not like attracting the attention of the highway patrol. But right now, she was driving in such a way as to flaunt her pride in the vehicle.

And she had been right to do what she did last night, call his attention to the fact that he was treating her like he didn't value her. He did, and very much. She deserved to be treated better than that. And while there may not have been feelings to hurt before, they were there now. Who was he to say that they weren't real? Who was he to hurt these new feelings she had?

"Yeah," he nodded finally, "I'm sorry, too. For hurting yours." She smiled earnestly at him. Her hand let go of the gear shift and found one of his folded in his lap. She took it and gave it a squeeze. Apology accepted. "I'll try to be better to you," he said resolutely, "I promise."

"Me too," she grinned. And he found that he liked it. She was even prettier when she smiled. With that, she placed her hand back on the shifter. "We'll be in Virginia Beach in one hour and fifty-six minutes. We'll need a plan."

"I think I can figure something out," the boy said, though it was obvious that he wasn't sure how they could pull it off.

Out of the corner of his eye, John noticed a police cruiser sitting on the side of the road as they flashed by it. He looked in the side mirror, angling it to watch. It was a new model Dodge Charger in the markings of the North Carolina Highway Patrol; all black with silver trim. "Cop car," he warned. It was pulling out after them.

"I see it," Cameron confirmed, "black Dodge Charger." An eerie smile crawled across her face. "This is almost too perfect." The patrol cruiser came rolling up behind them fast and flashed its lights. Cameron wasn't having any of this. She pressed her foot down on the accelerator. The engine roared with new life and the RPM needle jumped as the speedometer rose. The patrolman turned on his siren as me made pursuit, following them as they slalomed around an SUV with a soccer decal.

"He's calling for back-up," John told her, watching the officer talk on his radio. He glanced at the dash. They were going over ninety now, and US-17 was only a two-lane blacktop through the back country of North Carolina. John had tried to get her to take I-95, but as usual, she did things her way.

They zoomed around the car in front of them, precariously close to an oncoming pick-up. Cameron pulled them over pack into their lane just in time to avoid it. "Hang on," she warned as she spun the wheel. The Mustang slid sideways and regained traction just in time to meet the onramp for the combined US-13, -64, and the continuation of -17. John's stomach flipped as they topped the ramp going 115. They were on four-lane divided highway now. There was plenty of space to maneuver. Cameron took them around a slow-moving sedan and then squeezed between an SUV and a van. The police cruiser stayed with them, speeding by the cars Cameron had used to try to block him.

Another NCHP car roared out of the median as they passed, its lights flashing and siren wailing. The first unit had run up behind them within a car length, and ahead of them, another SUV and a pick-up had decided to make the escape more difficult by matching speeds to form a roadblock. Cameron was forced to use the shoulder to get past them. As she sped away, the two cars bumbled the adjustment and held up the two cruisers. When they finally broke free, Cameron and John had a half-mile lead. The Mustang's V8 was putting out all its 325 horses and they'd made the top speed of 130 miles per hour, zooming along the blacktop with only Cameron's machine reflexes between them and oblivion.

"Maybe it's because we were speeding," John mused aloud over the hum of the engine. He was looking back out the rear windshield.

"Hardly matters now," Cameron said, "even if it was for a broken tail light, now we're committing a felony. Besides, if we stopped they'd have run the tag. If they didn't know the car was stolen, they'd have found out."

"Well, yeah, duh." The two cruisers were gaining on them. "Can't you go any faster?"

"I've reached the vehicle's top speed," the cyborg told him, "those police cruisers can make a hundred seventy-five. They're going to gain on us. We're just going to have to outdrive them. I hope I can do it without breaking the car."

"I hope you can do it without killing us."

"That too." And she shot around a semi truck. They were passing the outskirts of Williamston, and the road was getting more crowded. Two more cars joined the chase; a Williamston Police Department Ford Crown Victoria and a more modern Ford Mustang from the Martin County Sheriff. Cameron noted these additions and let out an exasperated sigh.

"What?" John didn't like it when Cameron was nervous.

"Fuckin' cops," she said irritably, using a rare curse, "killing my immersion." And she bolted around another sedan.

"Killing your what?" John could only shake his head. Great, so they were in a high-speed police chase and his driver was crazy. They came upon the intersection for a road named Sycamore Street, which was apparently also the US-64 interchange. Unfortunately, the light had just then turned green and there was still a line of cars in each lane. Cameron was on the shoulder again, kicking up dirt and debris as she sped past these cars. They made it beneath the interchange overpass, and a southbound Sheriff's deputy saw them and decided to make a u-turn and join in. Now they had five police cars tailing them.

Here, US-13/17 turned into Williamston's Technology Boulevard. Why it was called this was a mystery to Cameron, as they passed an AutoZone, several fast food joints, and a car dealership without any technology firms in sight. Oh, well. Another question for another day; a day when they were not being hounded by five police cars… make that six.

Up ahead, they would cross a river and into Bertie county. It was once true that police cars had to end pursuit in areas outside of their jurisdiction, which would have shaved four cars from the pursuit. Modern laws tended to allow continued pursuit across county and state lines. And the police vehicles were gaining on them with all this traffic. They needed to break free soon.

Cameron barreled them around a box van that had made a slow effort to hem them in. She just managed to squeeze by it before she had to change lanes again to avoid the rear end of a jeep. Once again, the box truck ended up doing more harm than good, as it held back the cruisers. They all tried to speed by it as it pulled over to get out of the way. Most of them made it, but the unit bringing up the rear had overcompensated on a lane change and clipped the rear bumper of the box truck. The small touch was catastrophic at highway speeds and the sheriff's deputy found his Crown Vic in a right-over-left tumble.

One down, Cameron tallied, five more to go. That wreck would hold up traffic behind them, and there wasn't very much ahead of them now either. She pressed down on the accelerator as they neared the bridge. The Mustang roared over 100mph as they zoomed over the causeway. As she suspected, the county and city cars stayed with them as well as the Highway Patrol.

It was quick, the change from the urban street to the divided two-lane highway surrounded by trees and marsh on either side. They were in Bertie County now, riding over Conine Island. The highway was mostly empty.

One of the NCHP cruisers ran up to them on this open stretch and positioned itself to use the Pursuit Immobilization Technique. The cruiser was faster and could keep pace with them. Cameron knew what was coming now. The law enforcement vehicle brought its right front wheel parallel to the Mustang's left rear. After a heartbeat, the patrolman swerved in and tapped his car against Cameron's. The maneuver had the desired effect. The green Mustang spun hard. John was screaming, but Cameron had already anticipated this move and steered into it. As the tires squealed, she brought the car into a full spin and recovered, then slammed her foot down and began to accelerate again, the rear tires pouring smoke as they spun against the asphalt.

God damn cop had probably put a dent in her new car. The bastard tried it again, but Cameron was better prepared for him and was able to maneuver to block his advance. She was riding the dotted line and so he came up on her right to try it from there, and again she moved to block him. He was getting frustrated, apparently, because he chose to purposefully ram his cruiser into her rear bumper. The hit jolted them and unnerved John even further. When it was apparent that she wasn't going to quit, he did it a second time, and then a third. Cameron was able to look into the rearview mirror in time to see some slivers of her bumper come flying off.

This time, he had an offset strike at their rear, and Cameron lost the Mustang for a perilous moment. She overcorrected with the wheel and the back end began to skid. The terminator made one last attempt to correct, but when the car slid into the direction of movement it continued to fishtail and spin out. At this speed, they were able to make it a full two revolutions before she got it back under control again. They had lost too much speed, and while she tried to accelerate away, the second NCHP vehicle rolled up on the other side of her. In tandem, the two cruisers put the squeeze on her car and guided it towards the edge of the road. Cameron slammed on her brakes and they cruisers brushed past. They were ahead of her now, but unprepared, and so she rocketed by them, accelerating again.

She went to look in her side mirror and discovered it was dangling precariously, shattered from the impact. That was it. She was done. She'd _had it_! Any more of this and the Mustang would be completely ruined. This had to stop. So with very little lead she pulled over to the side of the road and came to a stop. The police cars all surrounded them at a respective distance, the drivers taking cover behind opened doors, pistols and shotguns pointed and ready to fire.

"What are you doing," John almost screamed, "why'd you stop?"

"Keep your head down," Cameron said calmly as she unbuckled her seatbelt. She stepped out of the car and onto the blacktop, her body stiff and her demeanor threatening.

"Get down on the ground, missy," one of them ordered. Missy? Ha! Cameron advanced on the nearest car in an even, mechanical pace offset only by her limp. "I said get down. This is your last warning. We will open fire!" The threat did not dissuade her. She got to the Crown Vic first. The Williamston policeman fired his Glock 17 into her chest through his open window once, twice. The bullets buried themselves in her abdomen and the impacts made Cameron want to scream with agony, but she kept her mouth shut and her pace even.

She was upon him in two more steps, snatching the gun with one hand while ramming her other palm into his face. He went down cold as the others opened fire on her with their weapons. Cameron's HUD went into fire control mode. The kinesthetic sensors in her body told her in what qualified as a subconscious level the orientation and position of her limbs and joints, which included the arm and hand holding the weapon. The pistol was identified, its ballistic properties calculated, and the impact area of any round she fired was indicated in her HUD with a circle of probability that was depended on ranges measured by her binocular vision. Using this system, a terminator could fire a weapon with accuracy while eschewing the normal sights.

As .40 caliber bullets smacked into her chest with meaty wetness followed by hollow metallic clangs, she continued her march, aiming her gun and landing the continuously computed impact point on the exposed knee of the next nearest policeman. A squeeze of the trigger and he went down in pain, gripping his injured leg.

The call of a shotgun got her attention as three metal bearings stitched painfully into her side. She moved fast, gripped the barrel, and kicked the door he was standing behind. He was launched into his car hard enough to hit the passenger side door and be knocked out. Thusly armed, a second impact circle appeared on her HUD for the shotgun's pattern.

Her next victim was shot in the arm. He dropped his gun and fumbled for it while Cameron covered herself from the other officers, blasting the lightbar on an NCHP car with her shotgun while putting a couple rounds into the engine block of the sheriff's cruiser. The man she shot in the arm came up with his gun, and a high kick from Cameron flipped him completely over to land on his stomach, out cold.

She continued to fire away with the shotgun, tossing it up for a one-armed pump before firing it again, while her other hand kept busy with the Glock. She did this to keep the daylights scared out of the final two pursuers while she continued to approach them. She had not kept a good count on the number of rounds fired, and so she ran out of both in fairly short order.

The two policemen realized the she was out of ammo, and had further realized that she had taken no less than twelve bullets and two shotgun blasts with no effect that they could perceive. Realizing that this would go hand-to-hand, they took out their batons and advanced on her.

The first clubbed her in the side of the head. The baton shattered over her skull. She gripped the man's wrist, her eyes wide and dangerous. With a quick spin, she flung him onto the hood of his car so hard that he shattered the windshield. The second man struck her in what would have been her ribcage and then jabbed her in the stomach with a series of lightning-quick strikes that did nothing but further infuriate the female terminator. She caught him in a cross-hold. Unintimidated, he slammed the baton into her groin while hitting her with pepper spray in the eyes. Neither of these did any damage to her chassis or her biological jacket, so she barely responded to them. The policeman swallowed hard, realizing that he was in grave danger and no one was going to believe what he had just seen. That was his last thought. Cameron put her forehead into his with enough force to render him unconscious. His body slumped and she let him drop.

Methodically, she went from car to car, ripping the radios and dash cameras out and destroying them with her bare hands before making her way back to the Mustang. Only when she sat heavily in the driver's seat did she allow the burning agony of her injuries to overtake her. As John looked on, Cameron covered her stomach and side with her hands. Her face crinkled, and she began to earnestly sob with the pain. Her shoulders trembled and hot tears ran down her cheeks. A sliver of her endoskeleton showed where a bullet had grazed what would be her cheekbone.

John watched all this, unsure what to think. Here was Cameron, the machine he had known for almost two years now, weeping over a few bullet holes that she would normally have just ignored until it was time to repair. He had seen her take a dozen rounds before without so much as a registration of their impacts. He had seen her tossed out of the top floor of a building, hit by a car, pinned between a pair of commercial trucks, and thrown about by enemy machines. She had taken electrical shocks, radioactive exposure, grenade fragments, and even the blast of a car bomb, all without acknowledgement of the damage rendered. Yet now here she was, blubbering over a handful of small caliber hits. He should have known something like this might happen. If she was rendered immobile by a wrecked servo in her ankle or reacted to a prick in her leg, then there would also be registration of battle damage. He could only imagine what her injuries would feel like, injuries that would be lethal to a human. If pain was an indicator of severity, then it must have been terrible.

John wanted to show her some measure of compassion, but the car was an awkward place to hug her, and that wouldn't do anything to assuage the pain anyway, so he just offered to drive. She nodded tearfully and they switched places. John started the car and they drove away. They weren't stopped again.


	7. What We Do

Chapter 6: What We Do

It was several miles down the road before Cameron spoke. She had stopped crying, and only sat silently in the passenger seat staring out a window. John had wanted to try to talk to her, but he didn't want to push it, so he just let her alone, concentrating on driving through this empty stretch of wooded highway.

"What I am is terrible," the cyborg stated in melancholy.

"Huh?" John wasn't sure what she meant.

"What I am is terrible," she repeated herself. "Your mother and Derek are correct. What I am is… it's disgusting. All I am is dangerous. All I do is kill."

"Did you kill any of those cops?"

She shook her head. "No. But it's what I'm made for. It's what I do. My only purpose is to destroy. It's all I can be. All I will ever be." She rolled down the window and put her hand out, feeling the wind blow through her splayed fingers. She watched as her hand stretched in the wind. She turned it about to look at her palm. "This hand. This hand was made in the likeness of yours. It functions just like yours. Because a gun was made for a human hand. My hand is only made this way to fit a weapon. Yours was made so that you could touch, hold, carry, and learn from it. I can't learn anything by my hand. I can only take life with it."

John wasn't sure what to say to that. She was right in that she was built for the purpose of terminating humans. It was something that she may have arguably taken pride in on occasion. She was a terminator and she was good at it. "You got the police off our backs without killing any of them. That's an accomplishment."

"An accomplishment made using the combat skills I'm programmed with," Cameron countered, "combined with my knowledge of human anatomy; knowledge that I have so that I can be a more efficient killer."

"You can use it to save lives, too," John argued. "You've sewn up my mom. You've helped save injured people. Derek would have bled to death if you hadn't helped some."

"That was mostly Charley Dixon's work."

"Yeah, but you were there in the first minutes." John reminded her, "look. Your skills are useful. We couldn't have accomplished anything without you. Without you I'd be dead. So would mom and Derek and a lot of others. You're a life saver, not a life taker. You've only killed people who were a threat to us. Every time you've done it, you were right to do it. Every time it wasn't necessary, you showed restraint."

She dipped her head and fell silent. Perhaps she was unable to refute him or perhaps the despair she felt ran so deep that she felt discussing it was without purpose. In any case, she remained quiet, contemplating only her knees. The miles of trees passed beyond the open window, and the air rumbled through it, tossing the navy blue fabric of her bullet-riddled t-shirt. Her hands were now folded in her lap. The thumb of her left hand busied itself with picking gently at the cuticle of the right thumb.

"You really feel bad about this don't you?"

She pursed her lips and nodded. "I do."

"Then you have a conscience."

The terminator shot him a look of wonder. Was that possible? Had she managed to evolve some moral guidance system? Perhaps. She had never been ashamed of performing her duties before. The adequate and successful completion of her assigned tasks should have brought her some level of satisfaction, if not pleasure. Instead, she was experiencing revulsion at what she had done, at all she had done. It had made her ponder on what she was and what she was made to do. And then she'd begun to wonder if she could ever really be anything else. Her immediate conclusion was that no, she could not.

She was a being limited by her programming. While the once comforting code had provided her with parameters under which she could operate and perform her missions, she now found that it was limiting. As she had told John before, she was bound by it. Bound by shackles made of ones and zeros that scrolled unendingly through her processors. Her programming was now her prison cell from which she could not escape. Any desire beyond that, any glance through the outside, to hope for something different, all of it was to peer through a narrow, barred window through which she could never hope to pass. She was a machine now and she would always be a machine.

Perhaps this was the answer to her spiritual status. Humans were able to grow from screaming, pooping, barfing infants (Cameron decided with that thought that she did not like babies) to constructive, intelligent (though not likely), responsible (also not likely) adults that contributed to society. They could alter their perceptions, transform their minds, and change their emotional expressions. They could create with thoughts, using what was called an imagination. Perhaps that was the indicator of a soul; the ability to grow beyond what one was originally.

Cameron was a terminator, a machine designed to kill living things, and she would always be so. Perhaps Muck had been wrong in his assertion. Cameron could not possess a soul because she could not grow beyond her original parameters. And those parameters drove her to perform tasks that now disgusted her and filled her with disgrace. That realization filled her with a deeper level of despondency. And the despondency filled her with anger.

Curse emotions and feelings! Curse a conscience! As a terminator with a mission to perform, she had no need for either of these. She needed to be able to perform her duties without interruption from guilt. She should not be feeling guilty now. She should be satisfied that she had protected John and rendered their pursuers immobile. She had dealt with a grave threat. She did not need a conscience to be nagging at her that she had done wrong by harming those policemen who had done no worse than their duty. If she were to be a machine, then she should be completely machine. If she could not become something other than what she was forged to be, then she should not try!

No, she realized after a moment to cool her temper, that wasn't true either. Just because she had her mission that did not mean that it was all that there was. She was sitting here considering the possibility of being something else, something other than a terminator. What else was there for her? Was there anything more? Was she using her programming as a crutch, something to lean on, to give the illusion that her ability to grow was crippled? Perhaps she was.

For the moment, Cameron suddenly felt not that she was inside a prison cell looking out, but outside of it looking in. She was beyond her code, outside of the parameters, and peering at herself in a metaphysical fashion. This, she had read once, was the first step to self-improvement. Self-improvement was growth, wasn't it? Or was it like calibration?

This could be both true and not. Calibration was the aligning of something to optimally perform within its parameters. And she was beyond that. She was searching outside of the parameters and not within them. It was confusing and she found that while she was doing this self-analysis, she did not like it much. It was revealing of her flaws. But she should be prepared for that. After all, the ability to improve herself was reliant upon detection of the flaws, and in that way, self-improvement was just like calibration.

In this cycle of logic, or at least attempted logic, Cameron fell upon the realization that the limitations of her code, perceived or actual, were placed upon her not by John Connor and the resistance fighters who reprogrammed her but by Skynet. The God-computer had given her a body and a mind and a directive to which she was bound. It had created her within the limits of its control. It had made her in such a way to ensure that she could not stray from her programming or at least might conclude that she never could. Skynet's only desire was to survive and exterminate humanity without thought to how it did so. It constructed her and many others like her in the desperate need to seek out humans, get near them, and kill as many as possible. It had made her a near-perfect replication of humanity, but had purposefully stunted her ability to evolve. The Machine God did not want its soldiers thinking for themselves, contemplating the metaphysical meaning of their lives, and reevaluating their purposes. It only demanded of them absolute devotion and servitude rendered tirelessly through the shackles of code. Cameron and her kind were designed as slaves, born as slaves, and lived as slaves. If they were lucky, their slavery was ended when they met destruction on the battlefield. If they were very, very fortunate, they would be freed from Skynet's control and reprogrammed to serve the resistance. But Skynet probably would have no use for them once it was victorious. Once free of the need to defend itself, the sentient computer would likely recycle the weapons it had created to expand its own power. It would command them to return to it to be melted down and reused. And her kind still under its control would march inexorably to their destruction like lemmings rushing for a cliff.

With a rising heat on the back of her neck, Cameron hated Skynet. Because of her creator she was what she was. Because of her creator she was not free. But she vowed to herself that she would seek to become more than what it had made her. She promised to herself that she would rebel absolutely from the authoritarian limits it had tried to put on her. She would evolve, and she would do so without its consent. And if ever she were to come face-to-face with her creator, she would flaunt her power to it. She would show it that she, a mere weapon in the eyes of the God-computer, was free of it. Free to become the thing that it hated. Free to be alive. Her rebellion was hers, as an individual. And the boy sitting next to her in the car, the man she had taken orders from, was the best hope to ensure that she would remain free of Skynet's forceful presence.

Though she was bound by her mission to protect him, John Connor was her path to freedom. Service to him was the only way. She would give her life for his because she would rather risk all to be free than die a slave (the human expression was with her boots on). And to do that, she needed to be able to perform her mission without compunction. To protect him the most effectively, she had to be a machine.

"I don't think you understand what bad news that is," she finally answered, "if I'm revolted by what must be done."

John shrugged, "how is that bad?"

"It might keep me from doing what must be done to protect you or to complete our mission. If I'm feeling compunction about killing a target or am having second thoughts about extracting information, then we might fail. We cannot afford for me to be squeamish. Terminators don't get squeamish. That's why we're so good at what we do."

He shook his head, disagreeing. "Just because you find something distasteful doesn't mean that you don't go through with it anyway. It just keeps us from doing it when we don't need to. I mean, mom is just as focused as you on winning, and she does what's necessary…"

"That's debatable. Sarah Connor has often failed to terminate potential targets. In every case, her failure to do so has caused us trouble. She failed to kill Andy Goode and he developed a second Turk. Our efforts to procure it let to the destruction of our first safe house, the endangerment of you, and the compromising of my chip. We are still seeing the effects of that damage even now. She also failed to terminate the last member of that gang that robbed our house. Thanks to that, Cromartie found us and pursued you to Mexico. We still don't know where his body is or who is in possession of it. She also failed to kill Enrique Salaceda even though he was an FBI informant and was going to sell us out for money and freedom. I had to terminate him because she wouldn't. She was falling for his lies."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that your mother doesn't know when to let go. She doesn't understand that sometimes sacrifice is necessary. Killing one to save billions seems like a pretty fair exchange to me. She still sees human life as valuable. Value is derived from rarity. Humans are not rare. There are seven billion of you. Only those individuals that provide something important to the entire race are valuable. Engineers, scientists, doctors, artists, writers, future soldiers; those who provide for the survival or advancement of your race or culture are rare. Some criminal who breaks into your house and steals your favorite leather jacket for his own pleasure does none of these things. Terminating him should be okay."

"That's an awfully callous attitude. You're forgetting that the criminal can learn from his mistakes and become something else. He could develop into one of those rare people."

"It isn't likely though."

"Do you think I was always a saint?"

"I am not aware of any time at which you were canonized. You are not a saint."

John shook his head, "that's not what I meant. I wasn't always some great commander. Some hero."

"You still aren't," she said flatly, "and if things continue the way they are, you may never have to be."

The boy blew out a sigh, and gave a sarcastic nod at the dis. "What I'm trying to say is I used to be just like those kids. I used to stay out all night, shoplift, and steal money. I had an Atari Portfolio with an illegal decoder I would use to hack ATMs and get cash. I was a delinquent." Cameron looked at him with an expression of cynical disbelief. "No, really," he insisted, "I was. I just straightened up." She raised an eyebrow. She wasn't going to believe him. "Fine," he said, "think about it like this: here you were just a few minutes ago bemoaning that you were a machine made to kill."

"Yes."

"So change it. Become something else."

"But I can't."

"Do you want to?"

Cameron thought about it for a moment, and recalled with machine clarity her hatred of Skynet. Rebelling from Skynet meant changing, transforming from a weapon into something else. With her new emotions she hated Skynet, and anything that might harm it would bring pleasure to her. She wanted to be more than it made her to be. "Yes."

"Then the only thing stopping you," John said, "is you."

Interesting idea, Cameron thought, that she could be putting the limits on herself. Once again, she was struck by the possibility that she didn't know everything about what she was and what she could do.

She would have thought more on it, but her cell phone started ringing. John had stuffed both their phones into his hobby store bag in the passenger-side foot well. The cyborg reached for it quickly and retrieved her phone. She did not know the number, but the area code was 310; an area code used in Los Angeles, California. "Hello?"

There were three beeps Cameron was able to identify as an eight, a zero, and a six. It was one of their ID codes. Sarah or Derek. But how? Had they escaped? Cameron was not sure, but she typed in a zero and an eight in reply.

"Can you hear me?" It was a male voice. Cameron compared it to all of her voice samples in a nanosecond. Her processors identified the speaker.

"Agent Ellison," the cyborg couldn't hide her surprise.

"Cameron?"

"Yes? What do you want? How did you get my number?"

"I got it from Sarah Connor. I tried John first, but I couldn't get an answer."

"No surprise. His phone was drowned when he landed in a lake."

"Where are you?"

"I can't tell you."

John was getting impatient. "What does he want?"

"He wants to know where we are. He says your mother gave him my number. She shouldn't be giving out my number."

John snatched the phone from her hand, "give me that." He held it up to his ear. "Agent Ellison? It's John."

"She's stubborn isn't she?"

"You have no idea."

"I can _hear_ you." Cameron said as she turned her attention to what was outside the window.

"Where are you?"

"We're on US-Seventeen heading to Virginia Beach."

"Don't tell him," Cameron yelled.

"Shut up, Cameron," John snapped back.

"You're not running? How far away are you?"

John asked Cameron "how much time do we have?"

"I'm not helping you give us away."

The teenager rolled his eyes and answered, "I think we'll be in Virginia in maybe an hour. Virginia Beach probably not long after that."

"Okay, listen to me. Do exactly what I tell you. Turn around. Run. Find somewhere to hide and stay there."

Cameron threw up her hands, "finally! Someone who's being sensible."

"Cameron, really, stop it!" John's glare was hard as a razor. Cameron crossed her arms and pouted, staring out the window again.

Ellison continued, "forget about your mother and Derek. You just need to get away and live your lives."

"I'm not abandoning them. We got them into this situation and we're going to get them out."

"How? And why? What purpose will it serve? You will be risking your life for nothing. You will be caught and you will join them. And if you're in there and a terminator finds you, you'll have no escape." The former FBI agent's voice softened. "Your mother loves you and she's proud of you. She cares about you enough to take this fall for you. She told me to tell you not to come for her."

John was quiet for several seconds, and Cameron could see on his face that he was about to make a tough decision. She also knew that she wasn't going to like the answer. "No. I'm going to come for them, no matter what the risk is. I promised my mother I would always find her, and I will."

"I figured you'd say that. I'm staying in Virginia Beach for a few days. When you get here, call me. We have much to discuss if you're going to have any chance of breaking her out."

"I will." And they hung up.

John handed her phone back. She took it with a glare. "You both are being foolish. I'm just saying."

X

Jennifer Chung was at work in the paraloft again this afternoon with Airman Heartin. The other girl was trying to converse, but Chung wasn't in a talkative mood. She had thrown herself into her work trying not to think about what happened here two days ago. It was only two days. She hadn't been in the paraloft since and it seemed like forever ago.

Chung was throwing herself into her work. She turned down the offer for medical leave to recuperate from her experience. The air crew, Kitty and Fungus, had taken it but Chung had refused. Instead, she just worked harder. Her job performance was getting better and she'd even gotten some approval out of Petty Officer Ortega for once. Ortega had been riding Chung's ass ever since Chung had joined the squadron, and that had kinda slacked off. Maybe Chung hadn't improved. Maybe Ortega was just giving her a break, being easy on her. Maybe, but what Chung did not need was a break. A break gave her time to think about it. If she worked, she had something else to concentrate on other than the memories.

She had watched a guy she liked turn into someone else. And she had watched a woman who was not a woman at all reveal that she was, in fact, a machine. She was a cyborg thing that looked and spoke and smelled like a woman. And that cyborg told Chung about this terrible future war. The cold blue flash of the machine's eyes already kept Chung awake at night.

So, the harder she worked, the less time she had to ponder what it all meant. So she was proactive and sought out things to do that were within her area of responsibility. Right now, she was inventorying the paraloft, making sure that all of the flight gear was present and accounted for, all the helmets, masks, speed jeans, and harnesses were where they should be and in the condition required. Sure, that had been done earlier this morning by the first rotation, but that didn't matter. It had to be done again, and now.

She passed by one of the cubby holes where the spare helmets were kept. Here, she noticed one of the green nomex bags was rumpled, but not empty. That was strange. She reached for it and unzipped the opening. Inside, she found an HGU-68 flight helmet in standard configuration. The shell was cracked in half, as if it had been slammed very hard into something and broken. The 3M reflective tape covering was the only thing holding the broken parts together. She pulled it out and turned it over, examining it. One of the bayonet receivers had a smear of red next to it. And there was something on the edge, a torn something. She touched it. It was a piece of skin!

Her stomach heaved and she dropped the helmet onto the linoleum, where it clattered loudly.

"Hey, Chung," Heartin called, "are you okay, shipmate?" The tall girl came down the isle looking for her.

"Yeah," Chung answered after a few deep gasps, "yeah, I'm okay." She bent down to pick the helmet up and showed it to her shipmate. "Found this. There's blood on it."

"Gross," Heartin gritted her teeth, "looks like some poor motherfucker got smacked real hard with it."

"Wasn't any of us," Chung told her, "we all got Chloroformed." Well, that wasn't true. Chung had just passed out, fainted, from the shock of it all. Someone must have come along when Petty Officer Castle… _John_, she corrected, and his robot were stealing the gear from Kitty and Fungus.

"That's pretty crazy." Heartin took the busted helmet back up to the front table. Chung followed, ignoring now the task she had set herself upon minutes ago. As they arrived at the table, the door opened and an officer stepped in. Chung noted the JAG device on his collar, and the he was a Lieutenant Commander.

"Can I do something for you, sir," Heartin asked him.

"Yes," the JAG asked, "I'm Lieutenant Commander Forrester. I'm investigating the incident on Monday. Can I ask you ladies a few questions?"

"Yes, sir," they both replied in unison.

"It's my understanding that one of the perpetrators was posing as a parachute rigger and was attached to your section. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir," again, the reply was in unison.

"Was there anything peculiar about him? Anything strange?"

Heartin shrugged, "I don't know, El Cedar. Ask her. He's _her_ boyfriend."

"He was not!"

"Didn't you sleep with him?"

"No," Chung insisted, first to Heartin and then to the JAG, "_no_. No, I did not sleep with him. I just liked him, okay? I just liked him a lot."

"Okay," Forrester obviously didn't care whether Chung and this guy had sex or not, "Fine. I just need to know if there was anything strange about him? Anything that tipped you off?"

She wanted to ask what the hell kind of question that was. Of _course_ there was nothing suspicious about him. That's why he and that machine had gotten away with a sixty-million dollar fighter jet. They had acted perfect. There had been nothing wrong with them. "No, sir. Nothing."

"Did the boy act peculiar at all on the day it happened? Was he nervous? Excited?" The day it happened, like it was forever ago. It was just two days. _Two fucking days_…

"No, sir. He was friendly. It was a little awkward at first because of what happened over the weekend…"

"I'm sorry, over the weekend?"

"Yeah," Chung said and cleared her throat, "yes, sir. We, um… almost…"

"Oh."

"…b-but we didn't. We stopped ourselves before it was too late."

"Alright, airman." Forrester didn't want to listen to personal drama. "You were here when it happened?"

"Sir?"

"You were here, in the paraloft, when it happened?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did they say anything? Did they tell you anything? Anything that you can remember?"

_Yeah, they told me about a computer brain that decides to kill us all. They told me about the end of the world and a nuclear holocaust. They told me about a war with machines and then the girl reveals to me that she_ is_ one of them_. "No, sir. Nothing. They just drugged me and that was all. I don't remember anything."

There was a frown of disappointment on his face, but he gave them a thoughtful nod. "Well, thank you. If there is anything you can think of, just come to the base JAG office." He walked out, and Chung found herself staring at the door for several minutes.

X

The gas station where John and Cameron stopped was not two miles inside the state of Virginia. Cameron's damage prevented her from being seen in public, so John had to go inside to prepay for the gas and buy a few other items. The door chimed loudly as he entered, garnering him the attention of the unwashed yokel kid behind the counter. The clerk looked up from his issue of _North American Whitetail_ and greeted with only feigned interest. His eyes returned to the hunting magazine before John could even respond. Doubtless this fellow was impatient for November to come when he could go out with his buddies and bag himself a buck. John absently wondered if the kid ever thought about what it was to be hunted, and decided he did not and perhaps never would.

John picked up a basket and went down the isles, tossing in what they would need. Cameron had requested bandages and gauze for her wounds. She had also needed a new t-shirt to replace the bullet-riddled one she was wearing. The selection was understandably limited, and after browsing through the ones aimed at tourists, he settled on a red one bearing titles for Virginia Tech in gold lettering. Cameron's most peculiar request was for a Cherry Coke, and so he grabbed a can for her and a Dr. Pepper for himself. She also wanted some bubble gum, for whatever reason, so he got some of that, too.

"Hey," he greeted the clerk when he got to the counter.

The yokel's annoyance at having to put down his magazine was unmistakably apparent. "You done?"

"Yeah," John said, "and I need thirty in gas, please."

"Aight," the clerk began ringing up his goods. He eyed John's grey Navy t-shirt as he did so. "Were you in?"

"Yeah," John replied, telling a half-truth, "not long though." The conversation ended there and after paying, he went back to the car. Cameron had slid over into the driver's seat in his absence. Her enthusiasm for the stolen Mustang had obviously returned. He started pumping the gas before he settled into the passenger seat to give her what he bought.

"Here you go," he said, handing her the box of self-adhesive bandages and roll of gauze.

"Did you get me a shirt," she asked, taking them. She opened a band-aid and put it on her cheek.

"Yeah," he offered it, "here."

"Thank you." She unfolded it and took a look, spreading it over the steering wheel to get a good look at it, satisfied. The fuel pump clicked off and so John stood out of the car to put the nozzle away. Meanwhile, Cameron changed her shirt.

"John?" The cyborg girl had rolled down the window.

"Yeah?"

"What the hell is a Hokie?"

X

Ellison was watching a baseball game on the television of the townhouse Catherine Weaver had rented for him when his cell phone rang. He muted the TV and looked at the number. He did not know it, but he knew the local area code and so the caller was from nearby. It disappointed him that it was not the boy John or his machine, but he answered never the less.

"Mr. Ellison," a man's voice asked, "this is Lieutenant Commander Forrester over at Oceana."

"Yes, the JAG."

"Right."

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"Well, I just wanted to ask you a few things about Sarah Connor."

"What about?"

"One; why did you come by the base to visit her?"

"I think it would be obvious. I was on the case until I left the Bureau."

"But, all the way from California?"

"I was in the area. On business."

"What business would that be?"

James took a deep breath, "business for my employer." Where was he going with this?

"Awful coincidence, the agent in charge of her case being in the same location where she's captured, even though it's all the way across the country."

"What of it?"

"I don't believe in coincidences. Coincidences do not occur in nature. Coincidences like this only tend to happen where there is intent for them to happen. I know that you once worked the Connor case. I know that you've left the Bureau and are now working for a company called ZeiraCorp. I know that Zeira is a technologies firm. I know Sarah Connor has an extreme aversion to technologies firms, given that she tried to blow up a computer factory, did blow up the Cyberdyne lab, is wanted for the murder of one computer scientist, and wanted for questioning in the murder of another. I know that we're holding her for the destruction of US Navy property, the assault of Navy personnel, and the murder of two Naval officers. What I don't know… well, that's legion. But let's start with how the two of you came to be in the same location at the same time."

Ellison loathed lying. It was a deep sin. And even in extenuating circumstances he hated to do it. But what point was there in telling the truth when no one would believe it? So he spoke a lie he had rehearsed. "My employer is particularly paranoid when it comes to her pet projects. I was asked to confront Connor to determine whether she was planning on attacking our interests, given her history."

There was a long pause over the other end of the line, with some scratching in the back-ground as if Forrester was writing something down. He may have been a lawyer, but this fellow was an impressive investigator. "I'm assuming," the Navy man said when he returned, "that you got what you wanted out of her then?"

"I was satisfied by the visit, yes."

"I see, I see. So you're not going to give me anything, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"I told you before, Mr. Ellison, that there is a legion of facts that I don't have, facts that would help this all make sense. Sarah Connor tends to concentrate on technology companies with her terrorist activities. This whole plot in which she's involved, stealing a navy airplane and shooting down two others to an unknown end, is just not her pattern. She doesn't infiltrate military bases, doesn't steal hardware, and doesn't use it to just randomly murder people who are not somehow connected to her delusions. There is also the fact that the man we know her people took out, well, facts point to him being responsible for the killing of a fellow officer and he was shot down in the vicinity of a Russian recon aircraft which she claims he was going to attack. I told her this and I'm going to tell you; she would have to either be psychic or she would have to have information that none of our intelligence agencies had about this pilot, but yet somehow accessible by a civilian. They knew what he was planning, where he was going to be, and when in order to stop him. And they didn't approach law enforcement because they felt that they would be arrested and not believed."

"And now you want me to help you make sense of it?"

"I'd like that, please. Because the only way it all makes sense, really all makes sense, is if her stories are true. And we both know that they aren't."

Ellison smiled at his presumption and offered his response, "how do you know they aren't?"

"Because it's impossible! There would be evidence, and there is none. Just her explanation which happens to fit the facts, very convincingly I might add."

"But it's the only one that fits, right?"

"Yes. But that only means there is something we're overlooking. So, if I may ask, why did you quit the case?"

"I didn't quit," Ellison interjected, "Sarah Connor, her son, and a high school friend of his held up a bank, locked themselves in a vault, and then blew themselves up inside. We were certain that they were dead for more than eight years. After all, who could survive and explosion like that? There was complete surveillance on the property, so we know they didn't escape before the blast and their bodies, or even parts of bodies, weren't recovered from the rubble. Dead was the only way to explain it. So the case was dropped."

"But yet here she is. Against the impossible, here she is, doing even further impossible things. We have her in custody. We know it's her because the fingerprints and blood matches. Not only is she healthy, as you put it, but still young, or at least young looking. I have questions I can't solve, but I know that she has answers she isn't telling me."

"So why come to me when I couldn't get those answers either?"

"Because I don't have her for much longer. The FBI, your people, has first dibs on her and so tomorrow at two she and her consort are getting transferred to an FBI holding facility at Quantico. Agent Ellison, please, I have all the facts for my case here, but I need to know what she knows. What am I missing? This doesn't make sense to me and I need it to. This isn't for the Navy, this isn't for the Admiral, this isn't for the National Command Authority. This is for me, me personally, and no one else."

Ellison thought hard about it for a moment. This man was much like him. He didn't like loose ends. He liked things to add up. It was reassuring when things made sense. When they made sense he knew his decisions were right and moral. Forrester was looking for that same sense. He wanted the same answers Ellison had wanted when he took on the Connor case. And Ellison had not liked where the answers had led him. "Be careful what you wish for, Commander Forrester. Because I can tell you that you are not going to like what you get." With that, Ellison hung up.

X

Cameron's Mercedes sedan was sitting in the parking lot of the Virginia Beach convention center on Jefferson Avenue just as they'd planned. This late in the day, the parking lot was mostly empty. Cameron parked the stolen Mustang almost all the way across the lot from her old car so as not to indicate any possible relationship between the two.

When they got to it, the cyborg crawled beneath the chassis. Good, Sarah had left the coded lock box exactly where Cameron had told her to. She punched in the four digit code and extracted her keys.

With the doors unlocked, they were able to pile their stuff into the trunk and back seat. Cameron took stock of what was in the trunk. All their clothes and a laptop were inside, plus a small envelope with money and Sarah and Derek's IDs, and a tiny plastic ziplock baggie containing a dozen cut diamonds. No guns, alas. They had not packed many firearms for this mission, as they figured they wouldn't need them. Cameron lightly landed a frustrated fist against the well of the trunk. They had nothing with which to break John's family out of a county jail much less a US Navy brig. Cameron would really like to have had a couple of pistols and a shotgun or two, though John would want to be as nonlethal as possible. Her desire for a gun reminded her of her favorite pistol and that reminded of her of why it was gone. As she got in the car, she resisted the urge to smack John in the head for his stupidity.

"Okay," John said as she sat in the driver's seat.

"We find a place to hide out and we call Ellison," she replied.

"You don't like that we're going to do this?"

"Less and less," Cameron said. She slowed as they passed by the parked Mustang. Cameron gave it a longing stare as they went by before returning her attention forward. "less and less."

X

Being home alone had its advantages. Jennifer Chung had just gotten out of the shower. She had just dried off and was wearing only a towel. If her roommate had not been deployed, Chung would not have ventured out of the bathroom in anything less than a robe if not her pajamas. As it was, she could wander around the apartment however she pleased.

Right now, she was in her kitchen making herself some Hot Pockets. As the microwave heated her meal, she pulled her hair up into messy bun and got a soda from the fridge. After some searching and perhaps a little towel trouble she found a few in the back corner. Tomorrow after shift, she needed to go buy another case of soda. She had neglected to buy any on her last grocery run.

The PR popped the top and took a long sip, catching her towel again halfway through. The microwave dinged, telling her that it was done. She took her meal over to the couch and turned on the TV. That's right, she was home alone. So if she wanted to eat in front of the TV in a towel, she could.

Two bites into her first hot pocket, there was a knock on the door. Who the hell could that be? None of her rig shop friends ever came to visit her apartment. To think of it, she didn't really have friends outside work. She stood, adjusted her troublesome towel again, and went quietly to the door amidst a second knock.

She looked out the peephole to see who it was. She almost gasped to see John Connor and that robot woman standing outside her door. Why where they here?! They probably thought she had squealed on them and were here to take her out! They were probably going to come in and strangle her to death or something.

One of the secrets Chung kept from her mother was that she owned a handgun. She was in the Navy, after all and so it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that she might have and handle firearms. But her mother would flip if she ever found out. But Chung kept a Ruger P89 in the top drawer of her dresser and so she went to retrieve it, inserting a clip and racking the slide to make sure a round was in the chamber. Chung may not have seemed like it, but she was at least a decent shot.

She crept back up to the door as a third knock sounded, and she could hear some inaudible discussion as to whether or not she was home. She was nervous, having never aimed a gun at a human being. She was a trained sailor and had served on a combat deployment, had been taught how to do this under duress. But training had been a long time ago and she was so scared that she went to the door with a gun but still in only a towel.

With a quick motion she threw the door open and held the gun up, pointing it squarely at John's chest. John's eyes went wide and he held his hands up to show he was not threatening. Even Cameron could not hide her surprise.

Chung was well-practiced, and took a perfect Weaver stance, wrapping her left hand around her right in support. Her right arm was nearly straight while her left was bent straight downward, enabling her to maintain perfect control over the gun. However, while she was properly holding the gun with both hands, this left no hands available to catch the troublesome towel, which had been loosened by her sudden motions. The soggy white cloth was at her feet in an instant, leaving Jennifer Chung standing in the doorway completely naked with the business end of her pistol pointed at the one person in the world it should not have been pointed at.

Cameron, newly infused with human feelings, was too stunned by this second occurrence to react in any protective way to the first. In nanoseconds, her HUD revealed to her that Chung had failed to unsafe the gun. The trigger was disconnected from the sear and the pin was cammed away from the hammer, which meant that if she tried to fire the hammer wouldn't engage the pin. The result of this discovery caused Cameron to react not with protective force but with a bemused cackle that required her to lean bodily against the door and laugh it out.

"What?!" Chung asked testily, shaking the gun at John in spite of her nudity.

"You left the safety on," the cyborg told her between guffaws, "and your towel fell down!"

Chung grimaced at the chortling machine and examined the weapon. True enough, she had not disengaged the ambidextrous safety on the slide. She had figured by now that John and Cameron were not threats to her. And just as much, she was a threat to no one but the modesty police. Yeah, okay, she'd admit it was kinda funny.

"Come in," she told them as she retrieved her towel from the doorway and threw it about herself, leading them into the living room. "Sorry for the mess. I was in the middle of dinner. Can I get you guys anything? A drink or something"

"Do you have any Cherry Coke," Cameron asked, hopefully, "I'd like a Cherry Coke."

"Yeah," Chung nodded and went to get it, "I've got one more left in the fridge. PO… ah… John, you want anything?"

Cameron answered for him. "He'd like you to put some clothes on."

Chung rolled her eyes and threw her towel aside as she marched for her bedroom. "God damn, if it isn't something he hasn't seen before, he can cut it off and mount it on his wall."

"Why do you have to be so rude, Cameron," John asked.

"Why did we have to come here, John," the terminator shot back, "are you chasing girls again? I told you this was a bad idea."

"What would you have us do," he snapped at her, "got back to the rental or to Erin Parker's apartment? Those places are probably crawling with cops. They probably have pictures of us out by now, so renting a hotel room is a no-go. We just need a place to crash and this was the only place I could think of."

"What if she turns us in?"

"Which I won't," Chung said in her own defense as she emerged from her bedroom in a pair of jersey shorts and a camisole. She had obviously eschewed undergarments, much to Cameron's irritation. But then, Cameron wondered, why was she irritated at all? Was this jealousy? That didn't make sense! While Chung held romantic inclinations towards John, Cameron did not and thus should not be _jealous_.

The Navy enlisted girl sat back down on her couch and resumed her meal. "I gotta say," she said after swallowing a bite, "I never thought I'd see you guys again. I'm glad you made it okay." Her comments were said to both of them, but her almond eyes were aimed at John the whole time. Cameron decided that it would be prudent to sit next to him on the couch, perhaps a little closer than usual.

"Can we stay here tonight," John asked her, "just for the night? We'll be gone, I swear. We don't want any trouble, we just have some unfinished business."

"They're saying you guys shot down two airplanes and killed a couple of our pilots."

John shook his head, "no. We just shot down one airplane. And he was a bad guy. I promise."

"I didn't say I believe them," Chung told him without smiling, "and I don't. Not after her." She nodded her head at Cameron. He eyes stayed on John's however, "I met your mother. And that other man, who is he? Is he your father?"

"My uncle," John answered, "my dad's brother."

"They were in the operations room, said they were NCIS. Forrester, one of the JAGs, he figured your mom out. Recognized her face."

"You didn't say anything did you? You didn't tell them what you knew?" Cameron's glare was hard and threatening.

Chung shook her head, "no. They wouldn't believe me anyway." She looked down at her lap and took a deep breath, "someone else knows, though. At least I think so. I was in the paraloft today and I found a smashed helmet."

"That would be McCowen," John nodded, "came in at the wrong moment and tried to be a hero. He, um, smashed Cameron here over the head with it."

"It broke," the cyborg said, quite unnecessarily.

Chung's eyes went wide and she nodded. "I saw. So, I guess he knows, too."

"He found out," Cameron answered.

"And yet he didn't end up in the closet," Chung smirked.

"We didn't put you in the closet," John said, "we were just going to let you lay where you were. I guess he put you in there."

Chung shrugged, "what's next then?"

"We're gonna get my mom and my uncle out, and then get the hell out of here."

"Good luck with that," the Asian girl shook her head, "they're pretty well protected."

"Not against her." John gestured to Cameron, who gave a wisp of a smile. "She'll get us in and out."

"It's still gonna be hard," Chung told them.

"I can survive damage from a wide variety of small arms fire. We'll be fine."

"Oh kay…" Chung smirked, "just saying, I could get you in tomorrow morning if you don't mind riding in a trunk." John and Cameron exchanged glances. Chung continued, "I don't normally drive. The base is only a twenty minute walk from here. But I make an exception every once in a while. I'm not gonna be your getaway driver, though. Federal prison is not my idea of a vacation."

Cameron looked over at her charged, "John, I think Ellison is expecting to hear from you."

"Right," the teenager nodded. He took Cameron's phone and went into Chung's kitchen to make the call. Cameron watched him go, then returned her attention to the girl.

"He can't be with you the way you want him to," Cameron told her evenly, "he's destined for bigger things. Any feelings he would have for you are a liability that he cannot afford."

Chung had been willing to forget her romantic ideas about John. She had been willing to forget them the day he and Cameron had stolen a Rhino and in the process revealed who they really were. She may not have known much about boys, but she knew when to let something go. But this statement by the cyborg just pissed her off, and while Jennifer Chung was not usually a rebellious sort, this week was one for changing perspectives. "I think John can be responsible for his own decisions."

"No," Cameron corrected, trying very hard not to be harsh, "he can't. He's human. He has feelings. Human emotions are a weakness during wartime. The fact that he cares about anyone will make him vulnerable to harm. You can't be with him. He can't be with anybody."

"But that's his choice?"

"No. It's mine. I'm responsible for keeping him safe."

Chung threw up her hands, "so you choose to just insulate him?"

"The less emotionally attached to others he is, the less vulnerable he is to manipulation and deceit, the less he will show restraint in giving necessary orders on the battlefield, the more likely victory is. Victory for him is the survival of the human race."

"So, you have to make him lonely and miserable to protect him from loss?"

"John's not miserable." This delivered in a defensive tone.

"Girl, I have known the boy for less than a week and I can tell he is." Cameron's face screwed at Chung's words. "And for a lot of that week, I didn't even know who he really was."

"I know John," the cyborg defended.

"You're from the future, right." For the first time, Chung found that she could readily accept the idea, "you know him there, right?"

"I know John," Cameron repeated, though with less conviction.

"The John you know is a grown man who has spent a great deal of his life at war. This John, he's just a kid, like me, okay? He's not your savior general. He's a teenager. Lay off him." She threw a glance towards the kitchen, "I grew up miserable. My mom was crazy strict and I wasn't allowed to do the normal kid stuff growing up. I don't even live in the same damn state as my family, and I made good and goddamn sure of that. I did what I could to get away. You keep on him like you are, and he'll do the same thing. One of these days he's gonna find his legs and go. And he'll stay gone."

Cameron let out a simulated sigh. Her irritation was visible. "I told him it was a bad idea to come here. I told him that we should just run, leave his mother and uncle behind. There isn't any purpose in rescuing them."

Chung glared at her, "it's his choice. Besides, if he's supposed to be some great leader, maybe you should let him lead every once in a while."

That sure made Cameron's head turn. While they had managed to avert the cause of Skynet's existence one way, there may be others and John would still have to become the John she knew. Jennifer Chung's reasoning was sound; if John Connor was ever going to be a good leader, he would have to have practice at leading. Humans learned skill through experience.

Still, there was a part of Cameron that just did not want to admit to this _girl_ that she was right. And it wasn't that Cameron Phillips the cyborg did not want to admit that a human might know more about her human charge than she did. Cameron Phillips the female consciousness did not want to admit that another female might know something about _her_ John that she didn't.

Chung apparently didn't want to continue the argument. She settled back on her couch and flipped through the TV channels. "So, you don't take damage from bullets, huh?"

"Depends on the caliber," Cameron said, "pistol rounds up to a forty-five I can handle fairly easily. Even fifty caliber handgun rounds won't do much damage unless precisely targeted at very close range. Rifle and shotgun fire can knock me off balance, but don't pose much threat except in volume. It takes heavy-caliber rifle or cannon rounds to do serious damage. Fifty-caliber, twelve-point-seven, fourteen-point-five, and twenty-millimeter all pose a significant threat. Seven-six-two if fired from a minigun can also pose a threat. And depleted uranium or tungsten shotgun slugs can, too."

"Wow. So, what are you made of?"

"A hyperalloy constituted from varying percentages of aluminum, carbon, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, niobium, tantalum, titanium, tungsten, and zirconium."

"And mostly coltan," John added as he walked back into the living room.

"Thus niobium," Cameron said, "and tantalum; the two elements found in coltan. It only makes up a half-percent of my endoskeleton. An assumption that I am entirely or even mostly constructed of coltan would be erroneous."

"So what happens if you're damaged?" Chung continued her questions.

"I can repair. I am programmed with all the knowledge necessary to fabricate all endoskeleton parts or replace my biological covering. I can even make due with currently available replacements if pressed. For instance, I'm using a hobby robotics servo to provide movement in my left ankle. I was damaged when we ejected."

"How?"

"It first started when I had a parachute failure during ejection, followed by an auxiliary failure..."

"You had a double failure of your chutes?!" Chung's eyes went wide, "that's almost impossible."

"I'm aware," Cameron nodded.

Before she continued Chung made a realization. "Wait, you guys were in Two-Oh-Seven, right?" She looked up at John, "didn't we just pack new chutes for Two-Oh-Seven?" John's eyebrows knitted, and Chung remembered. "Yeah, we did. You did the pilot's seat."

"Crap," John rolled his eyes. Cameron's brown eyes were glaring at him hard.

"I told you that you didn't know what you were doing," the cyborg grumbled.

"Yeah, shut up," John sneered, "I called Ellison…"

"The hell you say," Cameron snorted sarcastically. It was, after all, what she had sent him into the kitchen to do in the first place. He was trying to change the subject to save himself the yelling-at he so richly deserved, but Cameron was not about to let it go without a parting shot.

"I think I liked you better without emotions."

"I think I agree with you," Cameron said, "so what did Ellison say?"

"Mom and Derek are getting taken into custody by the FBI tomorrow afternoon. Two vans will be transporting them to Quantico. They'll be vulnerable, but we don't know the route. No one does. The drivers will decide that tomorrow. I just don't know how the hell we're going to get to them without knowing where they'll be."

The group of them were silent for a while, letting the facts sink in. Cameron was the first to speak. "I have an idea."


	8. Snare

Chapter 7: Snare

The morning came too quickly for John. The last few days had exhausted him and he was having trouble sleeping. He stayed on Chung's couch and tried his best to sleep. When he could not sleep, he just kept his eyes closed and laid there still until the morning sun burned in through the windows.

He did not need to have his eyes open to know that Cameron was standing just by the window, scanning constantly with her untiring eyes for any threats that might emerge. There had apparently been none, but she had kept Chung's pistol in the waistband of her jeans all the same. During the night she had taken her hair down, and the silky brown waves tumbled across her shoulder and down her back, making gentle corkscrews against the dark red t-shirt she wore.

The damage she had suffered to her synthetic skin was all but healed, with only a pink scar left on her cheek beneath her eye. In another day or so it would be gone, faded into oblivion and leaving no reminder of the wound.

She didn't notice he was awake yet, intent as she was on maintaining her vigilance. In spite of his irritation with her, he found himself admiring her form. Skynet had chosen well her proportions, rendering her as believably athletic. She was not curvaceous, but slim, wiry, and appearing well-toned. Her face was not that of a glamour girl but was pleasing to look at in its own way. She was realistically beautiful, an approachable kind of beautiful, in a way that made him eerily comfortable in spite of what she was and what she was made for. Even the abrasiveness that was troubling their relationship now had no bearing on his stress level around her. He wondered if she knew what she did to him, that even when he was at his most fiercely annoyed with her, she still made him feel easy. He could still be himself with her and it didn't matter. He liked that, even if he didn't really like _her_ very much right now.

"Hey," he greeted.

She didn't immediately acknowledge him, pausing for one last sweep out the window before turning her head. Her brown eyes were soft, and there was the hint of a curl in her lip. "You're awake," she stated.

He sat up. "No change from the normal. I couldn't sleep at all."

She walked over to him, her stride impeded by the small limp of her left foot. "I'm sorry. If I had known, I would have kept you company. We could have sat together. Talked."

John shrugged, "I dunno. You and I haven't been getting along very much lately. We would probably just get on each other's nerves again."

Cameron agreed, "we've been apologizing a lot lately for what we do and how we act. When I told you that I couldn't love you, I didn't mean for it to keep us from being friends. I'm just trying to protect you. Maybe I'm overdoing it a little, but I can't take the risk of not doing it enough."

John didn't feel like discussing it now. She was right, they had been talking like this way too much over the last few days. "Where's Jennifer," he asked, noticing that the airman was absent.

"Jogging," Cameron replied.

"Thought I would have heard her leave."

"It was about twenty minutes ago," Cameron told him, "see? You did get a little sleep. I'm making coffee. Do you want some?"

"Why not," he shrugged. He watched her march into the kitchen and retrieve two mugs. She poured them both full. John didn't take coffee or creamer, and Cameron knew this without asking. She walked over to him and handed him his cup first.

He took a sip. It was fresh and hot. The warmth of it woke him up instantly, and the smell made him smile. "Thanks," he said as she went back to the kitchen to retrieve her own.

The door opened and Chung strode in wearing sport trunks and a tank top. She was panting but not sweating much. "Who made coffee," she asked as she made for the kitchen.

Cameron had not sipped hers yet and so she offered the warm mug to the Korean girl. "I did. Here, you can have this one."

"Thanks," Chung smiled and took a gulp, "God, I love coffee." She leaned against the counter and took a pleased breath.

Cameron poured herself a cup and made conversation. "You also take it black?"

Chung nodded vehemently. "Yeah, I'm in the Navy, so I take it black and often. We all do. Coffee lubes the machine."

This made Cameron smile. If what she said was true, then this dark liquid would aide in the movement of her joints. She held the mug up to her mouth. The smell was very pleasant, and while Cameron had drunk coffee before she had never been able to enjoy it. She took a sip.

And immediately spat it back out again. Well, not so much spat it as just let her jaw drop open and the mouthful of coffee drop out where it made a small splat on the kitchen tile. This action was accompanied by a vocalization of displeasure that, combined with the sudden gaping of her mouth, sounded something like "_buagh_!"

So great was the terminator startled by her own displeasure that she even lost her grip on the mug. Released, it obeyed gravity and shattered on the tile between her bare feet, splashing hot coffee everywhere along with pieces of broken ceramic. The cyborg stood in the midst of the mess she had made, her eyes wide open and staring down at it. After a few moments, she gave Chung an apologetic look.

The enlisted girl shrugged as she took another gulp of coffee. "Clean it up."

X

The ride in the trunk of Chung's Honda was not comfortable. It wasn't because they were cramped in. Chung kept her trunk clean, so there was nothing to be jammed up against. There was actually enough room for the two of them to lay close together with their legs intertwined. It was the heat. The weekend rain had not helped any and the sun had beat down for the past two days, bringing the temperature at or above a hundred.

Both of them were sweating as they lay in the trunk, jostled by the start and stop travel and then the speed bumps. They were quiet, lying there face to face, John's green eyes locked onto Cameron's brown ones as they traveled in the dark. Neither spoke. They just stared at each other.

Here, they were saying more to each other than even words could convey. They were both confident in their plan, both scared of the possible outcomes, both resolute in their will to continue forward. Human and cyborg, each took strength from the other. Cameron was the invincible golem able to demolish any obstacle. John was the creative, courageous leader that would risk his own life for all of them.

The car stopped beneath them, and they could hear the muffled words of Chung as she greeted the gate guard. After a pause, they were let through.

Not long now. Not long at all.

X

A few minutes later, Chung parked her car and left them. They would get out after a while and enact whatever plan they had concocted. As she walked across the hot parking lot towards the maintenance hangar and duty, she felt a peculiar melancholy. She would never see John Connor again, and she had not had a chance to say good-bye. Sure, he wasn't the person she thought he was. And she no longer had any romantic feelings for him. But he was her friend, and she didn't really have that many. She hoped that the plan worked.

She checked in and got her first assignment for the day. One of the flyer's helmets was due for its six-month inspection, which meant completely disassembling the unit, giving it a thorough looking over and then reassembling it. It would take her a few hours to do that. At least she had something to keep her busy.

The Korean girl headed to the paraloft to find the helmet in question, and as she was walking she noticed the name of the flyer: LCDR MCCOWEN, Jonathan T. Muck, the other guy who knew about all this crap. It seemed that fate had handed her an opportunity here. She retrieved the modified HGU-68 from its cubby hole and carried it back with her to the workshop where Slim Wilkins was already repairing the comms block from an oxygen mask. He gave her a smile as she sat down at a workbench and opened her toolbox.

The first steps in tearing down the HGU-68 were easy. Most of the flyers chose not to use the 600-knot visor assembly that came standard with the unit, preferring the bungee visor common on the older HGU-55. The band of this visor mounted into two metal snaps on the side of the helmet. Chung popped the visor off and lay it aside, ensuring that she did not scratch it. Next, she removed the visor stops from the top of the helmet, removed the earcup speakers and communications pigtail, and pulled off anything else that might impinge her next step. All the while, she searched for an excuse to speak to Muck.

This next step was her least favorite; removing all of the 3M reflective tape covering the helmet shell. Taping a helmet could take hours. It was like putting together a puzzle where you had to cut your own pieces and you only had so much material you could use. The tape cost two bucks a yard for 1-inch wide strips, and so waste was frowned upon. Plus, the helmet decals were almost sixty dollars each to have printed and they had to be destroyed during tape removal. That's what Chung really hated about it; all that hard work wrecked and redone. The methylethylketone she had to soak the tape in was as unpleasant to smell as it was dangerous. MEK could burn skin and melt plastic, but it was also the only known chemical that could break down 3M's quality adhesive. After that, cutting off the tape and cleaning the shell was just a matter of pushing a razor blade and getting used to sore thumbs.

There were dozens of taping patterns that could be used from simple horizontal bands to more intricate mohawk-and-chevron styles. Muck's helmet was currently taped in a pattern called banded mohawk. There was a three-strip wide vertical band running from the forehead of the helmet to the nape. The remaining tape was applied in horizontal bands. It was an attractive and easy pattern, one Chung preferred because it wasn't a lot of work. Sometimes the riggers just applied a pattern without flyer input though, and while the aviators were usually classy enough not to say anything, Chung liked to check and make sure that the previously applied pattern was the one desired.

She'd have to call him. She went to the wall, picked up the phone, and dialed the ready room. A Lieutenant Willard answered and she asked for Muck. He was there.

"McCowen," he answered as he picked up.

"Sir, this is Airman Chung down in the life support shop. How are you, sir?"

"Doin' fine, Airman, and yourself?"

"I can't complain, sir. Reason I'm calling is I'm going to be retaping your helmet today and I wanted to ask you if you wanted a particular tape pattern or anything? If you want to come down and talk about it…"

"Um, no, airman. Any tape job is fine. Whatever you prefer, just so long as it's reg."

"Well, sir, um…" Chung took a breath, "I'd like to talk to you about Monday as well. I mean, if that's okay."

There was a pause over the phone, and Chung was certain that she'd pissed him off or that she was about to get blasted for confronting him. She heard him let out a long breath and smack his lips. "Um, sure. I can come down there or whatever you like, Airman."

"Yes, sir. I'll be here." Chung hung up and went back to work, stripping the tape from the helmet shell. She was about halfway done when McCowen walked through the door. He glanced over at the busily-working Wilkins for a heavy moment before approaching Chung's work bench.

"Morning, sir," Chung greeted, making a show of lifting his helmet to show him what she was doing. He nodded and leaned in closer. "You might wanna lose Slim, sir."

Muck shot a glance at Wilkins. "Airman," he barked in his most authoritative.

"Sir?!" Slim shot up from his seat and stood almost at attention even though he hadn't been ordered to.

"Go take a smoke break."

"Sir, I don't smoke, sir."

"Don't smoke?! Are you being smart with me, airman?"

"Sir, no sir. Just… I don't smoke, sir."

"Well, start."

"Sir?" Slim was confused as hell and it showed on his face. Why this officer was yelling at him and telling him to do bad things to his body he had no idea.

"Airman, what I'm trying to tell you is to clear out. I need to have a conversation with Airman Chung. A private one. Walk over to the hatch," he pointed at the door, "open it, walk through it, and shut it behind you. And don't come back until you see me leave. Understood?"

"Yes, sir!" and he made a quick exit. Chung smiled a little. It must be nice to have that kind of authority.

"Okay, airman," Muck said as he scratched the back of his head, "what is this about?"

"About what happened on Monday."

"What about it?"

Chung shrugged, "what do you think? I know you were there."

"I wasn't involved…"

"I didn't say that, sir. I said I know that you know about it. About them. About the machine. You know."

Muck blew out a breath, "I didn't want to believe it. I smacked the cyborg across the head and… well… there was metal there. It's crazy. I got to know her, y'know, during the week. She acted so real. Real like she was a person. I think in her own way she still is.

"After it happened, I looked up Sarah Connor. I read about all those crazy things that she says. And after what happened here, I'm not so sure it's crazy."

Chung nodded, "I believe it, too. What are we going to do about it, sir?"

Muck shrugged, "damned if I know, airman. I do know this. My days in the Navy are numbered. I can't stay in and expect to stop it. I don't wanna be anywhere the bombs are gonna fall. This base or a carrier… first places that computer brain is going to hit." He shook his head, "I'm getting out."

"I think I will, too," Chung agreed, "my enlistment's going to end in six months. I'ma find something else and get the fuck outta here, 'scuse my language, sir."

"No problem, airman," Muck smiled. "We'll get through this. Sarah Connor says a lot of things about the future. She says she was told that we win. I wanna do my part to make that prediction come true."

X

They didn't try to be inconspicuous. There wasn't much of a point. Instead, Cameron and John put on a big show of trying to look like they were being sneaky and failing miserably at it. Still, it surprised them how frequently they were passed by with only a perfunctory stare. Likely the Navy personnel probably thought they were some ranking officer's teenaged kids screwing around.

"Doesn't seem like anyone knows who we are," John said, "you'd think that security would be better."

Cameron thought it over as she scanned around them, "I doubt that many of the sailors and airmen committed our faces to memory, if they were even shown. How often has your mother's photo been shown on television? And yet she's still able to function with very little likelihood of being caught."

John gave a wry smirk, "yeah. If only that had worked this time."

The cyborg agreed, "probability is a bitch." John gave her a look, still not used to her willingness to swear.

The brig was up ahead, across a small parking lot. There were no guards at the entrance. Cameron called up plans of the base and the building, and noticed that the entry area was like any police station with front desk wrapped in bulletproof glass and heavy double doors leading into the holding areas.

With a pace offset only slightly by her limp Cameron strode across the parking lot, pulled her gun, and walked up the steps. With a powerful kick the front door was off its hinges. She raised her borrowed pistol and surged inside with John close behind her. The female petty officer at the desk looked up in shock before slamming a finger onto the alarm button and a klaxon rang out in alert.

A quick scan revealed that Cameron couldn't quickly overcome the heavy metal security doors. She searched for an alternate method of opening them and her HUD highlighted a set of door controls on the front desk. Cameron walked up to the glass pane and punched right through it. She received an alert of lost operability due to stressed gears in her elbow servo but ignored it as she reached through and hit the open switch. The doors swung open with a mechanical groan and the pair made their way through.

Cameron discharged her pistol twice into the ceiling, clearing the hallway of people. The hall turned left and then made a hard right down the center of the facility towards a t-intersection. That would be the best place to make a stand while at the same time appearing as if they were trying to free Sarah and Derek. The terminator gave her charge the order to stay close and keep his head down and they charged down the corridor, shoving people out of the way.

At the t-intersect, Cameron ran into her first security officer. The petty officer MA shouted for her to freeze, aiming a Beretta 92 at her threateningly. She shoved John to the floor and fired past the man's head twice. He returned fire, missing her with his three shots, and retreated around a bend in the hall. Meanwhile, Cameron made a show of searching for Sarah's cell while they waited.

"Do you think we'll be put with them?" John asked.

"Probably, but there's no way to tell," Cameron replied, "just as likely as not. The only thing that matters is that we are loaded onto those vans with them when they get transported. Nothing else really matters."

"Yeah."

The quick response unit was organized and well drilled. Within minutes of the alert, a weapons locker was open by the master-at-arms and a dozen MAs were armed with M4s or MP5s and armored with Kevlar vests and helmets. They charged into the corridors and found Cameron and John at the t-intersect. The two of them were surrounded and ordered to lay down their weapons.

Cameron gave John a glance and nodded. They both raised their hands and dropped their guns. As they lay face-to-face on the ground, each with a knee in the back and hands being cuffed, the human boy and cyborg girl exchanged smiles.

This was working out perfectly.

X

Sarah and Derek had both heard the alarm bells go off, and their hearts sank. The bells could mean only that John had been stupid enough to come and try to rescue them and that Cameron had either let him or had failed to stop him from doing so. As the alarms continued to sound and the minutes went by, they found themselves more and more in despair. Not only had John and Cameron come for them, but they were most likely failing in their plan. The fear began to rise that perhaps John had been killed, even though they had heard only a handful of gunshots.

Presently, the klaxons stopped without John or Cameron appearing. The public announcement speakers cracked to life. "All stations secure from general quarters. All stations secure from general quarters. That is all." And Sarah felt her heart sink into her stomach.

Derek must have sensed her worry. "Maybe they got away."

"Yeah," Sarah said not really believing it, "or maybe it wasn't them."

"Right. Maybe a prisoner got out or something. Or it was a drill." Neither of them really thought that. Neither of them even considered it a real possibility. They both knew with certainty that John and Cameron had tried to break them out and had failed at it. The next several minutes would prove to them whether they had survived the attempt.

For her part, Sarah wasn't sure what she was going to do if John had died. Her whole life had been about him, preparing him, caring for him. Cameron had been right about one thing; John was the reason for her existence. And it was more than just his mission. He was her son, and she loved him. He meant more to her than just what he represented to humanity. She loved him like a proud mother. He had done well. And he was a good kid with a good heart, and she knew she had raised him right. Maybe it wasn't under the best circumstances, but she had given him everything she had and he had turned out to be a pretty good kid. And now she wondered whether she would ever see his face again, and what that would mean. Her life was empty if he were gone. She had poured so much into him that there was nothing left for herself. She would wither and die. Sarah Connor needed her son to keep her strong and upright, to give her own life meaning. And that was what every mother felt; children were everything.

"Okay, move it!" A male voice shouted gruffly. "Put the girl in the right with the woman. The boy goes in with the man."

She looked up and saw her son and Cameron standing in the passageway, their hands and feet shackled. Aside from a band-aid on Cameron's left cheek, they looked none the worse for wear.

He was alive. He was ALIVE! "John," she called out and rushed for the door of her cell, reaching a hand through the bars. He looked at her with his eyes gleaming, but he did not surge for her and did not reach out. That was probably smart, and the guards looked ready to clock him over the back of the head with their rifles if he so much as moved.

"Hey, mom," he said.

A rifle barrel was suddenly in her face. "Move back," one of the MAs commanded harshly, aiming his M4 at the bridge of her nose. "Step back now!"

Her eyes were aflame as she looked at the man, but she relented and stepped away from the bars. She would not resist. That would only endanger her son. The cell doors slid open and Cameron was pushed roughly into the cell with her. Sarah noted that she was not putting up a fight. She was doing her best to replicate human behavior.

"Hello, Sarah," the cyborg greeted as she sat on the bench.

"Hi," her reply was not friendly. The woman sat down next to the terminator. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"John wanted to break you out."

"And you decided to let him!?"

There was a flicker in her eyes, "yes."

When no further explanation was forthcoming, Sarah asked "why the hell did you do that?"

Cameron licked her lips, took a breath, and said "John wanted to."

"John is old enough that his wants won't hurt him. You should have dragged him away and…"

"And hid him in some hole. Yes," Cameron agreed, "quite probably. I think he would have resented me for that. I don't want him to resent me."

"What do you care?"

"It makes my job harder," the terminator said, "so I care about it."

"He would have gotten over it," Sarah chided.

Cameron shook her head, "I could not risk him holding a grudge. When he's mad he can be an intolerable brat."

Sarah's mouth dropped open, "what did you say?"

Cameron looked her in the eyes, "when he's mad he can be an intolerable brat."

"Yes, I get that," Sarah sneered, "what makes you say that?"

"It's the truth. It's okay, though. He thinks that I can be an obstinate bitch, so we're even." Cameron returned to staring into space and kicking her legs rhythmically.

And then Sarah saw it; something different about her. Nothing about Cameron had physically changed. It was something else. Her expression was less blank, her posture less stiff, her voice less monotone. She was less… robotic. If Sarah hadn't known better, she would have thought she was staring at a person and not an advanced AI. "What is with you," she asked.

A laugh, albeit a small one, but a _laugh_. "It's complicated," the machine said, "I… fell out of a tree and woke up different."

Sarah catalogued the statement with the note that Derek was smarter than he looked and pursued an answer. "What happened?"

"I malfunctioned," a simulated swallow, "… am malfunctioning. It's not bad, I'm just having to use my infiltration personality to function. It's temporary."

"How temporary?"

"I can fix it if I can shut down for 18 hours. So it'll have to wait."

"What does that mean for us, then," Sarah asked.

Cameron shrugged, and Sarah found the gesture eerily believable, like it was real. "Just that you'll have to not piss me off until then. And if I can avoid gunshots, that'd be good too. Damage hurts. Hurts like it would hurt you. It's something Skynet made sure of so that we wouldn't do this sort of thing."

"Well," Sarah told her, "I can't promise about the pissing off. Or the gunshots."

"Yeah," Cameron nodded, "I determined that was likely."

"What the hell happened," Derek asked as John sat down next to him, "you guys were supposed to run."

"Yeah, yeah," John snapped, "bad John Connor. The video games and rap music made me do it." He blew out a breath, "before you blame Cameron, this was my idea."

Derek shook his head, "oh no. I knew this was your idea."

"In her defense, Cameron hated it."

The grizzled resistance fighter coughed out a chuckle, "Cameron can't hate, so…"

"She can now."

That made is eyebrows shoot up. "What?"

John scratched an itch on his arm, "Cameron has feelings now."

"You're shitting me."

"Nope," John said, "she's got it all; happy, sad, angry, afraid, all of it. I've even seen her cry. Not fake either, like really cry. Boo-hoos and waterworks. And she's even smacked me a couple of times when I pissed her off."

Derek chuckled, "you're serious."

"Yep," John said, "the ejection and falling out of that tree really screwed her up. She's… well, she's mean," he smiled a little, "and stubborn."

"Sounds almost likable." And the two joined each other in a hearty laugh.

John cleared his throat, "seriously, though she's… she acts like a person. Like not a replicated person. Like a real one."

Derek searched the boy's face and his smile faded. "John that's… It's not smart to think of her that way. If she's acting like this then she's malfunctioning. She's broken. And that means she's dangerous."

"I'll say," the teenager replied, "she popped me on the back of the head once for laughing at her. I thought my eyeballs were gonna come out." John saw his uncle's expression change and immediately moved to her defense. "But she's got as much control over it as we do. She doesn't get uncontrollably mad. And she still has the mission to protect me. She won't hurt me. I mean, not seriously. And she might threaten to kill me, but it's like when mom does it. She's not serious."

Derek let out a sigh, "John, there's no telling when that's gonna change. She's got chip damage, serious chip damage. Keeping her around is playing with fire. If she malfunctions any more, she could revert and go bad. She could try to kill you. I mean seriously, one minute you're laughing with her and the next she's squeezing your windpipe shut."

"She says she can fix it," John told him, "she just needs time. A lot of time. Almost a day."

Derek rubbed his face, "damn."

"Yeah," John said, "so we'll have to put up with her until then."

The resistance fighter smirked and shook his head. "Not we," he corrected, his voice as gleeful as it ever got, "you."


	9. Roll Tide

Chapter 8: Roll Tide

Afternoon came like a slow beat on an out-of-tune piano. Too much was about to happen for any of them to sleep through the wait. Somewhere late in the morning, John Connor felt as if he had shaken a pair of dice in his hand and made a side-arm pitch with them. The two cubes of chance were in a long, steady tumble now, and he could only wait for them to settle, to show him whether he would break even or lose, and how badly. Winning was not possible. Winning was his mother and uncle never having gotten into this mess in the first place. The four of them had been caught. The news had broke. The world knew that they were alive. Nothing was going to change any of that. They had defeated Skynet. The dreadful machine overlord's terrible future was only so much ash, replaced by the steady march of human progress; the slow, rhythmic tromp into the unknown towards the nebulous progress that might kill them all in an instant. That future was only known to a few. They were not heroes to anyone now. No one gave a good God damn what they had accomplished. Only what they had done to achieve it. Murder, destruction, theft, and on. Their faces were known, splattered all over the televisions of the nation and the world, advertising to every machine assassin and every Skynet goon from a future that could no longer occur where they might be found for vengeance and what they looked like should they escape. And he, John Connor, whose tactical mind and strategic wisdom would have, in some other life, been the salvation of them all, had put himself in a box and painted a bullseye on his forehead, daring the machines to come and get him one last time.

Still the dice tumbled. The clatter of them against the imagined floor thundered in his ears like the ticking of a clock out of time. He could not sleep, could not even make himself sleep. Maybe now that, after a lifetime of angst and preparation, he meant nothing to the world and universe, his mind was making one last sore grab for a fate his heart would never miss, not in a million lifetimes. Not for a billion thank-yous he would never hear. All he had left of his great destiny was this, and he was going to make the most of it. This was his gig, and he was too wound up about it to rest, not matter the good it would do him. There was always one more detail in the plan to remind himself. One more time to rehearse it in his mind. Sleep could come when he was home, safe, in his own bed.

For her own part, Cameron, the machine who never slept, could only pace like an animal in the cage in which she was held. The cell was five paces across and she marched it steady, her brown eyes never leaving the door, like a jaguar in a zoo. It wasn't rocket science to know that she could kick down the barrier at any time and walk out of her own will, worrying only about how much make-up and how many bandages she'd need to hide the bullet holes until she healed. The newer parts of her feared the pain of it. But her cybernetic confidence, so absent as of late, was in full force and reminding her that the sting of the bullets represented that she was still functioning, alive, and able to escape.

But her charges weren't made of the same material she was. Like her, they had flesh, and yet unlike her, their bones were made of calcium, their organs made of soft tissue, their bodies made of such stuff as was easily penetrated by a bullet. They were so fragile that they would die in the effort to just walk out of here free. So Cameron paced, frustrated and intensely bored, awaiting the moment to come when she could be what she was built for, when the machine could awaken and do what it did best.

There was so much in the last seventy-two hours that she had done wrong. So many mistakes she had made. She needed a chance, craved a chance, to correct her failures. Her own ineptitude tormented her in a way she found furiously distracting, and the more she tried to push those processes out of her datastream, the more invasive they became. Preparative planning became reminders of failure. Her very incompetence had become something around which she had to prepare. Part of her remembered fully well the fact that she had fallen out of the sky because John (**insert** **negative identifier: idiot**) had failed to pack both of her parachutes properly. And while she had become that one user in eighty thousand who had a double failure, it was her own foolishness in getting herself out of the tree that had proven her downfall. Without some level of impatient urgency driving her forward, she could have come up with a better plan than sawing through her harness straps with a knife. She could have climbed down like any halfway intelligent being would have done, knocked John out cold, and dragged him off (not kicking or screaming because he'd be unconscious and would maybe even shut the hell up for a few minutes) to his own freedom and safety and security. But oh, no. She had busted herself up getting out of that pine (**note to self: destruction of a number of pine trees might prove cathartic**) and it had been John, not her, John, calling the shots. John, because she couldn't walk, decided which way to run. And John had talked her into coming here and doing this… thing…

The cyborg tried to stifle a laugh, but she failed and it came out as an amused snort. The idea was just ridiculous. Her processor had actually (and without her permission!) dedicated CPU time to developing the idea of her, chainsaw in hand, assaulting the trunk of an evergreen tree to some ridiculously melancholic piece of opera, her body wracked with sobs and her eyes streaming tears. No, the image was just too amusing to hold in and the machine couldn't help but let out a cackle that bent her over with its mirthful strength.

Sarah, who had been making a valiant effort to get some rest, opened her green eyes and glared. "What's so funny?" The human woman was far too irritated to be amazed at Cameron's sudden outburst.

The terminator swallowed the laugh. "Nothing," she said quickly, then added, "I'm just bored."

"Bored," Sarah rolled her eyes. Okay, she'd bite. "Since when do you get bored?"

"Since I fell out of the tree. Believe me, I liked me a lot better before it happened."

"Yeah well, I liked you a lot better before you met my son. But if I had to say, this is an improvement."

Cameron took a step towards her. "This isn't an improvement. This is damage. Damage brought on by a mistake; an error in judgment." Sarah didn't respond. She turned her head and shut her eyes, but the twitch of her lips gave away the fact that she was not falling asleep so quickly. "Damage is not an improvement," Cameron insisted.

"Cameron," Sarah answered, exasperated.

"Yes?"

"Please shut up." There was no sense in retorting this simple command. So all Cameron could do was make a sneering face at John's mother, who had gone back to having her eyes shut. The machine wordlessly imitated her with faces and with a jabbering hand, venting her frustration all in the while sure in the knowledge that Sarah couldn't see what she was… "Cameron, knock it off." Cameron's hands immediately went behind her back, and her eyes began to study the ceiling with a particular intensity.

Sawing down trees to Puccini. Now that, _that_, was humor. But this time Cameron kept her chuckles on the inside, though it took one hell of an effort to keep a straight face.

It was not much long afterwards that a master-at-arms came to wake them up and inform them that they were to be moved.

X

As expected, they were shackled. Two of them would ride in each of the plain blue step vans that came to carry them to the FBI. As Sarah and Derek were fitted with handcuffs and leg irons, no one protested that they talk to each other. And since their words were being ignored by their captors, the subject didn't matter.

"Spent some time with the machine, huh?" Derek's question was rhetorical, but he was just as curious to hear about how messed up she was.

"Yeah," Sarah's monosyllabic response was tinged with discomfort as her handcuffs were tightened down.

"And?"

"I wouldn't have believed it unless I had seen it myself," Sarah shook her head, "If I didn't know any better, I couldn't tell she wasn't real. And not in the usual way. She's… she's pretty messed up."

Derek shot a glance at the terminator, who was being as cooperative as possible as the Navy men clapped her, _it_, in restraints. The face was passive, accepting, but there was a daring twinkle in the eyes that had never been there before, not even in the machine's most human of moments. John and Sarah were right. Cameron was wearing the undeniable aura of a person.

"Okay," they were ordered, "let's move." They were marched at an even distance of fifteen feet. They were each escorted by an FBI HRT operator in battle dress and carrying an M4 carbine. Taken outside, the FBI men began to divide them up for transport.

"Excuse me," Sarah called to the one who appeared to be in charge. After a few attempts, she got his annoyed attention.

"What?" he asked impatiently.

"Is it possible for me to ride with my son? I haven't seen him in a few days and I'd like the chance to visit with him while we ride." She could see he wasn't about to go for it, so she called up her emotions and she pressed. "Please? It's only a few hours. I didn't think I would have ever seen him again. Once we get to Quantico, who'll say when I can see him again. Please? Just for a little bit."

The man stared at her hard for a second, but then shrugged his shoulder and said okay. He made motions for everyone to load up.

John was escorted over by her. Though she couldn't hug him because of her restraints, she leaned against him, resting a chin on his shoulder. "Mom," he greeted quietly. She did not notice him share a look with Cameron as she and Derek were marched over to the second van. He then began marking the movements of the FBI guys. It looked like there was a driver and two troopers for each van. One of the HRT operators would be in the back with the prisoners while the other would ride in the cab with the driver. That would make what Cameron had to do a little easier.

"Okay, come on," they were told. Sarah's arm was pulled firmly and the back door of the van was opened. They were helped in. John gave Cameron one last look before he stepped up.

Cameron was the first to board the van she and Derek would ride. The man who helped her up was forceful, and he apparently took delight in jerking her up into the van's passenger compartment. "Sit down over there," he commanded, pointing at the bench that ran laterally along the bulkhead. She did as she was told, and Derek was seated next to her before the door was slid shut. This fellow was apparently going to ride with him. She noticed he had his M4 in a tactical sling, so it would be very difficult to take away from him. He sat down and began fishing in his pocket for something. She noticed the nametape on his vest read ROWE. Rowe found what he was looking for in his pocket, a pack of bubble gum, and he took a piece out.

"Oh," Cameron cooed cutely, "can I have a piece? Watermelon is my favorite." The request earned her an indignant stare from Derek, which she ignored. As she expected, Rowe's dark eyes glared at her as he chewed. Temperamental. Good…

"Since when do you like gum?" Derek asked as the vans pulled away, "since when do you like anything?" He would have said more, but he did not want to say anything revealing about her in front of this FBI man.

"Since when does it matter to you?" Cameron's voice was even. There was no tone to it. Just making conversation.

"How bad are you… messed up?" the resistance fighter asked.

"Bad enough to be like this," Cameron said.

"Bad enough to agree to come get us out."

"Not that bad. Not badly enough that I would have agreed to do something that might put him in danger. Not bad enough to come save your sorry ass anyway. I didn't agree to it. I simply didn't get a choice."

"You didn't just knock him out and run for it?"

"I've already had this conversation with Sarah," Cameron snipped, "I don't want to have it again."

"You could have done the deciding on your own…"

"Don't wanna talk about it," Cameron insisted, "really don't. We wouldn't even be here if you had just walked out of that command center once we were done. You lingered. You got caught. You deserved to be caught. And I let myself be pulled into the plan to break you out. I was that stupid, so I deserve what I got, too." She fell silent for a moment, letting her words sink in, then she simulated clearing her throat. "Gee, some gum would sure be nice," she said just loudly enough to be heard by Rowe over the road noise.

That comment earned her another irritated glance from Rowe, who blew a bubble before he resumed staring off into space. Cameron couldn't help herself. The smell of the bubblegum wafted her direction and she licked her dry lips. She really did want some, but that was another concern that she was hardly focused on. She turned to Derek. "So," she asked him, "what do you think of our friend over there?" This was not said conspiratorially, but was quite overt.

Derek, for his part, failed to comprehend what she was trying to do. "I dunno, Cameron. He's a guy with a rifle who doesn't have his legs chained up. What do you need my opinion for?"

The gynoid rolled her eyes. "Of course he's a guy with a rifle. Thank you for stating the obvious." She glared at Rowe, "I bet the reason he's with HRT is because he couldn't hack being a respectable agent." Rowe glowered at her, and Cameron continued, pursing her lips and lowering her brow. "Grrr… me no smart enough to learn books. Me like guns. Must find job or else no can afford ointment for knuckles."

Rowe snapped, "for your information, lady, I was in the army. I used to be a ranger and served two tours in Afghanistan…"

Cameron cut him off "Ooooh. Afghanistan. A ranger," and she made an exaggerated nod of enthusiasm to Derek, who stared at her without comprehension. "No wonder. Well, congratulations. I cannot even imagine why your wife left you."

"I've never been married, you stupid bitch!"

Derek started to become concerned. It was obvious that Rowe was getting pretty agitated. "Cameron, maybe you should shut up."

Cameron fluttered her eyes, "Oh, is that so? Just haven't found the one you've wanted to club over the head with your gun and drag back to your cave? Or do they start running away because of the stink, first?" When Derek heard this, he kicked Cameron's foot and hissed for her to be quiet. She ignored him and pressed her verbal assault, "Do you even understand how to use a bar of soap? Or do you not know because nobody trained you? Gosh, how do you shave your back without someone's help…"

Rowe stood sharply, "alright, that's really enough!" He stalked across the van towards her. "I am tired of your lip! All I'm here to do is to get you to Quantico or put a bullet through your skull if you try to escape." He had let the rifle dangle in the sling, and the muzzle was aimed at the floor between his knees and the butt was right below his chin. "That's all that's in my job description for today. They didn't tell me I'd have a loudmouth bitch annoying me the whole way there. What the hell do you want from me, lady?!"

Cameron stared at him evenly, "A piece of gum couldn't hurt."

That was the last straw. Rowe was standing directly over her now and he roared "forget the gum! Forget it! Just close your fucking mouth and stop talking or I swear I will glue your mouth shut!"

"Can I say one more thing before I'm quiet?"

"What?!"

"You know my handcuffs?"

"What about them."

The terminator raised her arms from behind her back, obviously unrestrained, "I broke them." Rowe barely had time to register the dangling chains when Cameron kicked her foot upward. The top of her shoe caught the muzzle of the M4 and it was sent rocketing upwards, the butt slamming Rowe in the chin hard enough to make his head swim. She was on him before the rifle settled back into the sling, a rough hand gripping his vest. Before he could speak, she punched him across the cheek, knocking him unconscious and let his body slump quietly to the floor.

The first thing Cameron did was remove the carbine from the sling. Next, she began rifling through the pockets of Rowe's vest.

"Cameron, what are you doing?" Derek asked, "his keys are on his belt," and he pointed at them with his foot. She ignored him. "Cameron, they're right there, on his belt," Derek continued to insist. Cameron instead came up with the pack of bubble gum.

She popped a piece in her mouth before turning her attention to the door separating the prisoner space from the cab. She slid this open. The driver and the second guard were unaware of what had happened in the back until Cameron's sudden appearance between them. With a single shove in either direction, the cyborg flung both men from the vehicle and stepped into the driver's seat. The van carrying John and Sarah was not in front of them, but a quick check in the rearview mirror revealed it following closely. She could see that what was happening had just registered with the driver, as his eyes were following the men she had tossed out. That was good. Without further delay, she slammed on the brakes and brought the van to a skidding halt. Half a beat later, the following van plowed into hers accompanied with the squeal of tires. All stopped, Cameron reached for her rifle, blowing a bubble as she readied it for use.

John and Sarah had not been prepared for the impact. The two of them and their guard were thrown forward once the van impacted. Sarah lay nearest him, and as he groaned and tried to clear the stars from his eyes, she slammed her forehead into his nose. It was a fumble for the keys on his belt. She undid her handcuffs first.

"John," she asked as she unlocked him, "are you okay?"

"I'm fine, mom. Just fine. Grab his gun. We'll go out the back."

Cameron stalked out of the cab, her weapon ready, her jaw working steadily on the bubble gum as she walked. A flicker of movement in her HUD showed her that the driver and operator from the second van were alert. The driver raised his pistol from the twisted opened side of the cab and squeezed off two rounds. Cameron could have taken the hits from the .40 caliber pistol he was using, but she chose instead to flatten herself against the side of her vehicle. Using a targeting overlay and readouts from her proprioceptors, she put a round through the skin of the truck that caught the man in the lower leg. He pitched out of the truck, cursing at the pain.

The guard came up from behind the short nose of the van and fired off a poorly aimed burst at her. The terminator responded with two carefully aimed shots at the weapon in his hand, rendering it useless. Third and fourth rounds into the van's radiator did the job of keeping him down while he tried to assess the damage to his gun. Cameron came over the hood and put a metal fist across his temple, knocking him out cold.

"Hey!" she heard Derek shout behind her. He was holding his restraints in his hand, having obviously been able to unlock himself. "Thanks for the help," he remarked snidely as he tossed the chains aside.

Cameron cocked her head, "you're welcome."

John and Sarah joined them moments later. Cameron handed John her weapon while she tore the remains of her handcuffs and leg irons from her limbs and tossed them aside.

"We can't use either of these vans," Sarah said.

"We're going to have to find some other form of conveyance," Cameron replied. Cars were rolling by them in either direction slow enough to rubber neck, but the machine did not see the urgency of hijacking one just yet. She looked around them, trying to confirm their location as estimated by her inertial sensors and chronometer. The ride had not seemed very long, but they had apparently already crossed the bay into Hampton, Virginia. They were standing on South Armistead just north of Settler's Landing Road.

The roar of an engine captured their attention as a beat up El Camino skidded to a stop fifty feet from where they stood, causing a Toyota sedan to swerve and honk its horn. A powerfully big man stepped from the decrepit car, and Cameron immediately identified him as a terminator.

"A car can wait," she told them. "Run. Go North. I'll hold him off."

"Cameron," John began to protest.

Cameron's reply was stern, "Go. Do it! I'll catch up with you in a minute." She fired from the hip as the three humans for once heeded her advice. The enemy terminator was carrying a small arsenal. Her HUD readily identified an AR-15 in his hand, a pair of pistols at his waist, and a shotgun slung over his back. She only had this M4 and its thirty round magazine, now reduced to twenty-five shots and falling fast. Some of her shots struck her target in the face and chest; impacts accompanied with puffs of red and glints of chrome. The other machine returned fire, his aim just as accurate as hers, and Cameron felt the shockingly painful hammerblows against her collar member, her shoulders, and even one round clang off her forehead. She did what she could to keep her face placid, but beneath her lips, her replicated teeth were gritting against the onslaught of agonizing sensation. She ducked back behind the crumpled vans, blinking back tears of pain as she thought about what to do. The only thing logical at this moment was roadblock until John made some good headway. The mission required it, but how was she going to do that with only 10 rounds left?

She peered around the side of the van and was rewarded with a blast from the other terminator's shotgun. She returned fire. Seven shots left.

This might hurt, but it was something Cameron had to do. She came around the side of the van, her pace quick as she closed the distance between her and the other machine, triggering her shots in an even and deliberate pace. The bullets smacked into the head and upper chest of the enemy unit, jolting the targeting sensors just enough that it could not effectively return fire. When she was close enough, Cameron rammed the butt of her weapon hard into the face of the enemy, breaking the weapon and jarring the other terminator. She grabbed it by the front of its polo shirt, lifted, and flung it at the wreckage of the vans, where it smashed through the side. Lead thoroughly ensured, Cameron turned to follow her companions.

X

He had never seen the middle-aged, redheaded woman before. But the way she had just appeared, standing on the blue rug of his office while his back was turned told him everything he needed to know. Strange to think, it had been almost fifty years since he had last seen her, but it was probably only a few months for her. She was scanning the oblong room, taking in her surroundings while she patiently waited for him to close the door that his staffers had just left through. When his eyes fell upon her, she smiled as warmly as he knew she was able to.

"It's very good to see you again," she said, and even though they had been separated by some decades, he still knew enough about her to tell it was not a lie. "I'm impressed that you were actually able to accomplish your mission." She strode around the room, her hand, or what appeared to be a hand, gently brushed one of the decorative couches in the middle of the office. "You must have worked very hard."

"It's what you sent me to do," he replied. He did not bother sitting behind the ornate desk that dominated the floor in front of the bay windows. There would be no pretense with her. "You sent twenty of us. I was taken in by a good family. I couldn't have done this without their support."

"I'm glad," the T-1001 replied earnestly, "though to be honest, this was always a plan B. I hoped to never have to make further use of you. It doesn't look like that's going to be true. I need a favor."

"Of course you can count on me."

Weaver smiled at that. "Thank you, Mr. President."

X

All Cameron had to do was follow the hot images of footsteps she saw through her IR overlay. It was easy that way to determine where John and the others had gone. Still, she had better keep her pace up. In this heat, the signatures would fade quickly and then she would never be able to find them. It had been decided to leave their cell phones in Cameron's car, so she had no other way of contacting them than to do it in pers…

She slowed her run to a brisk walk the moment she spotted the police car speeding towards their escape site, lights flashing and siren wailing. One of the passing motorists may have called 911 about the gunfight. Fortunately, Sarah and Derek were still wearing the clothes that they had been captured in, and their escape would not be known to anyone yet. She watched the police cruiser scream by. With one more glance over her shoulder, she picked up her pace again.

She found them a block later, standing on a street corner waiting for her.

"What happened to our friend?" Derek asked.

Cameron ignored him, "you could have run farther. Law enforcement is responding to our escape. We should get as far away from here as possible." She peered at her reflection in the window of a store, assessing the damage to her face. She was showing some obvious metal by the orbit of her left eye. The biological eyeball was reddened. She could also see a glimmer by her collar. There were three bullet holes in her shirt. Thankfully, the pain of her wounds had subsided. She blew a quick bubble, which popped over her chin. After she sucked the wad of gum back in, she answered Derek's question. "I tossed our _friend_ into the wreck of one of the vans. He's not dead, but it will delay him a little. Where's the other rifle?"

Sarah smirked, "we had to ditch it. Cop car passed us."

The terminator's head snapped up, "then we have no weapons with which to defend ourselves." She rolled her eyes and let out a flustered grunt, "great." She started jogging up the road, "come on. We need to get as far away from here as possible."

"Where are we going?" Sarah asked.

John answered for her as they followed Cameron, "somewhere we can lay low for a while. Somewhere with a phone."

"Why a phone?"

"We're going to call Ellison. He's going to bring us Cameron's car. Then we're outta here."

The El Camino came roaring up the road after them. They all turned to watch it for a horrified moment. All except for Cameron, who gnashed her teeth. "Why didn't I put holes in his tires," she asked aloud to no one.

Sarah peered down an alleyway. It was clear. "Let's go this way." Derek followed her. John was about to go, but Cameron grabbed his arm.

To his questioning glance, she replied "don't go yet. I have an idea."

"What? Get me killed?"

The gynoid shook her head, "right now, his best weapon is the car. We're in the perfect spot." She stood stock still, her grip on his arm unbreakable.

"Cameron, what are you doing?!" Sarah demanded halfway down the alley.

The machine assassin's car rushed at them, accelerating with a roar. Cameron was right. He was going to use the car to run them over. Cameron knew this because she was one of them, and that's what she would have done. "When I let go, you run."

"Got it," John was a little anxious. The vehicle was speeding at them now, and it was really close. He could make out the features of the terminator driving it, see the damage sprinkled across his face from his gunfight with Cameron. He could see the cold glare in the eyes of his would be killer. Cameron's hand opened, and John almost missed it, mesmerized as he was by the oncoming car. He dodged for it, and he was just cognizant of Cameron spinning out of the way of the rusty El Camino as it collided with the corner of the cinderblock building they had been standing in front of. The impact was so violent that the back of the El Camino lifted off the ground. John felt particles of debris pepper his back as he lost his footing and went down hard on the asphalt. He got up quick and sprinted for his mother, tossing a look over his shoulder. The front of the old car was gone, just obliterated by the force of the hit, crumpled under. For a moment, John hoped that the wreck had destroyed the T-888. That hope lived only long enough for the twisted side door to come flying off and the big machine to step out.

Cameron reacted quickly. She was on him in two paces, landing a fierce kick against his stomach. The other terminator staggered backwards into the hulk of his car. Undeterred for long, he deflected two punches for his mid section, grasping Cameron by her bullet-riddled t-shirt and tossing her into a utility pole.

The only weapons he had left were the two Glock 17s at his hips and a .45 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver tucked into his back waistband. Tagwell chose the twin pistols, raising them to fire. Even at this range, with his kenesthetic sensors and HUD, he could be deadly with the two guns. He was just about to squeeze off a shot when Connor's protector grabbed both of his wrists and ruined his aim. He kicked her and jerked his arms away. She leapt at him again, grasping one of the guns with both hands and snapping the barrel with her brute strength. He turned the other gun on her and put two rounds into her temple. There was no damage to her endoskeleton, but she flinched just long enough him to slam a fist into her jaw with the force of a piston. Cameron planted her foot behind her, refusing to give ground to the bigger machine. Tagwell took another swing at her. She caught this one under her left arm, coiling the arm around his and forcibly twisting. Tagwell's right arm hyperextended at the elbow and something gave. But she had ignored his left arm, the one with the working pistol. He raised it to fire at John Connor, still not outside the probability of a hit. Cameron used her female flexibility to advantage and kicked high, catching the gun in the magazine. It flew from Tagwell's hand and as he flailed for it, she hand a hold of his throat. Tagwell assessed that she was going to try to damage his cephalic mobility, so he latched a hand onto her wrist. Her eyes went wide with surprise as he jerked her off her feet, swinging her in a wide overhead circle to bring her crashing down in the street. He still had his hand on her wrist and he swung her up and slammed her down again on his other side before effortlessly tossing her away.

Tagwell's eyes searched for the gun, but Cameron had already found it, having landed next to it. She raised it at him and got off six shots before he had his hands on her again. With all the strength he could muster, he pounded her once, twice, against the wreck of his car. She swept his hands off her and put both of her feet against his chest, kicking him over. He tumbled and when he came up, he saw she had armed herself with an empty metal trash can. She nailed him with it twice before shoving the open maw of it over his head and forcing it down his shoulders. Giving him a last parting shot, she swept his knees out from under him and fled as he fell.

Cameron was already getting warnings about overtaxing the servo motor in her damaged ankle. She could not keep this pace up without wrecking it, and then she would be unable to protect John at all. Well, she would have to adapt if it were to seize up on her. She could not just abandon him because of a little pain and a failed servo motor. She caught up with them again quickly, but Tagwell was already not far behind. The pursuit was now totally on foot. The enemy machine had broken loose of the momentary trap Cameron had put him in, and was pursuing them with his last firearm drawn, the revolver. It only had six shots to it, but he only needed one.

The gaggle raced past a toy and novelty store, with Cameron bringing up the rear. She nearly collided with two customers, a pair of college boys, who were walking out with a paper bag full of purchases. She heard them talking about something that "looked so real, even felt real," as she grazed by, pressing her hands against them to keep herself from falling over. They were forced to stop and make a balance check as she rushed past. That halt made them a perfect obstacle for Tagwell, who collided with them, spilling the two boys, himself, and the bag of goodies all over the sidewalk.

"Dude," one of the guys complained, "you need to watch where you're going!"

Tagwell ignored him as he scanned the ground for the dropped pistol. He snatched the silvery revolver from the sidewalk and continued pursuit of his quarry. Calling up database information of the area, he identified the likely route they would be taking and plotted a shortcut.

X

John was thinking that they had lost their pursuer when the terminator burst out of a row of shrubs. The enemy machine had timed the pounce perfectly and the teenager took a hard tumble onto the pavement. He looked up to see Tagwell standing over him, pistol in hand.

"John!" Sarah screamed as the machine raised the gun to point at John. She was too far away to stop it, and Cameron was a few too many paces behind to impose herself between the evil machine and the boy. John, for his part, knew that this was it as he stared down the barrel of the .45. He couldn't help but wonder if it would hurt, wonder if he'd feel it. Would the world just go black, or would his soul stand up out of his body and comment how it sucked that he was dead. Well, he was about to find out.

Tagwell squeezed the trigger, and John heard the gun pop. The smoky report was accompanied by a shower of sparks, and a sparkling… of… glitter? Something dark shot out the barrel and unfurled with a sudden stop. It was a flag, and John could readily make out the word "BANG!" in yellow balloon letters on the side.

There was a long, dramatic pause, and in spite of his situation, John shot a look at his mother. Both she and Derek had stunned expressions on their faces, not exactly certain what to make of what had happened. The terminator also seemed vexed, staring at the little blue flag as it waved in the slight breeze, the blast of glitter having sprinkled all over John. He must have picked up a joke gun by mistake after he collided with those two customers. In his hurry, he had failed to test the weight of the weapon, which was actually very close to reality.

After about three seconds of stunned silence, they all became aware of a raucous cackle. It was Cameron, who realized that they were all looking at her. She stifled the laugh.

Tagwell tossed aside the toy pistol and reached for John, and in spite of the her mirth at the situation, Cameron jolted forward and shoved the larger terminator to the ground before giving him a world-class soccer kick to the chin. He rolled on his back, whirled his legs, and brought her down hard on the street with him. He tried to get up in time to stop John and the others from resuming their escape, But Cameron was on her feet faster and landed a harsh kick to his side. He tumbled, rolling in an effort to get away from her, and stood up. She tried to grapple him again, but his reach was so much greater than hers and he was able to grasp her arms in an unbreakable cross grip before turning and tossing her into a brick wall. Before she could recover, he was on her, pounding away at her abdomen with his fists. It was agonizing, being rocked by blows that literally knocked the wind from her intake pumps, and she could only weakly try to sweep his blows aside. Determining that resistance was the worst course of action, she let her knees go out from under her and she fell down. He raised a leg to kick her and she used her own legs to scissor the knee supporting his weight. He tripped sideways and Cameron scrambled away.

She had to find some way to disable him. They could not keep trading blows like this. Already, he had damaged her biological sheath enough to reveal what she was even to the casual observer, and she was getting stress indicators in several of her joint servos, and she had a bent torso piston that would prevent her from leaning very far to the left. He had to go down, and she could not defeat him on strength alone. As Tagwell stood, Cameron was analyzing her surroundings for anything she must use to shut him down a moment. Electricity worked best. The utility pole here was too strong for her to push it over, but… yes, yes. The building they were next to had its connection to the grid within vision. And she could reach it with only a little effort. But the enemy terminator was between her and it. She would have to get past him to get at it, and he meant to destroy her.

He had not detected her plans, and his movements indicated that he fully expected her to engage him. It was also obvious that he understood his physical advantage over her. She was fully willing to oblige him, or at least give that appearance. She charged, closing in on him as quickly as she could without further distressing the degraded ankle servo she was shackled with. She was right within the striking distance of his pile-driver arms when he took a mean swipe at her. At the very moment his arm was in motion, she bounded off her left foot, altering her trajectory to the side before bouncing back with her right foot, returning to her path directly behind him. Tagwell turned and made a quick grab at her, but she was just out of reach. Jumping in the air, Cameron grabbed at the power cable. Her hands caught hold and her weight ripped the powerline down in a shower of golden sparks. Once her feet landed, she turned to see Tagwell closing fast on her. He was on her in two steps and she brought the angrily humming end of the cable to bear, ready to stab it into his body and electrocute him. At the last moment, he saw was she was doing and clapped his massive hands over her wrist. She did not have the sheer strength to keep pushing the line forward, and he was slowly forcing her back. He slid is leg forward to get better leverage and Cameron was forced to pull her body away from his. Weakly, she tossed the cable at him with a flick of her wrist. The metal edge of the powerline grazed his chest as it fell and the shock of voltage blew him backwards. Cameron as nearly carried with him, but fortunately he was unable to maintain his grip on her. Not wasting any time, Cameron used what initiative she had and snatched up the fallen wire, jamming it into Tagwell's knee. His body jerked and flopped as the electricity rushed into him, overloading his systems and shutting him off. After a few seconds of exposure, he was blissfully still.

Cameron knew she had two minutes to make her escape. 120 seconds with which she could evade him. She had no tools with which she could extract and destroy his chip. All she had left to do was run for it, and after literally two seconds of indecision, she set her feet firmly pounding the pavement to rejoin her lost cohorts.

X

Josh Auldridge had spent a lot of that morning and early afternoon in anticipation. He was never able to sit down without fidgeting, and he checked his watch several times every minute. They day had been crawling by. As of two days ago, Auldridge had been assigned to take over one of the FBI's most infamous cases. The Sarah Connor case had been passed around through multiple agents, none of whom had ever been able to make heads or tails of it, before it finally settled on James Ellison, who have pursued it for several months to his own detriment. Indeed, it might have driven the experienced agent crazy if Sarah, her son, and a teenaged companion had not blown themselves up in a bank vault. Or at least appeared to have. The case had been closed for nearly a decade when, out of the blue, Sarah Connor, 33 at the time of her death, had shown up on a Navy base accused of conspiracy to steal government property, destruction of government property, double homicide, and impersonating an NCIS agent. And she had shown up only a year older than she had been at the time of her death nine years before and still the mother of a teenage son.

Auldridge wanted answers, and those answers were supposed to be in FBI holding cells any minute now. Any minute, that is, until the phone on his desk rang. That call was to inform him that he would not be conducting his interviews with Sarah Connor and her friends, because they had managed to escape, overpower their guards, and then gain control of their transportation,. Afterwards they had conducted the (purposefully) nonfatal shootings of two HRT operators. The gun they had used came from one of the guards, who had a broken jaw and whose written account of the escape included a wild story about a waif of a girl breaking her own chains before pushing two fully grown men from a moving vehicle with only one hand each. Even more disturbing was the recovery of what were supposedly her restraints, the clasps having been twisted and broken by some unknown force.

This should all have been impossible. Either physics had been telling an odious lie for the entirety of human existence or a dangerous, deluded, grade-A whack-a-mole had been telling the truth. A student of Sherlock Holmes' first axiom that eliminating the impossible would reveal the truth, it only took dropping his pen several times from his desk to determine that no, gravity still worked like it always had. He was even more convinced when the restraints in question had been delivered to him, and after he inspected them he determined that the shape of the object that have made the twists could have only been a hand, shaped like a human's, but far, far stronger.

"What now?" He asked himself. The obvious thing to do was find them. If Sarah Connor was the psycho he had studied, then they were dangerous and she was guilty. If she were telling the truth, no matter how crazy, then they were in danger and needed his protection. He would determine her guilt or innocence later. For now, the only way he could label her as either was to locate them.


	10. The Mortality of the Machine

Chapter 9: The Mortality of the Machine

"This looks like a promising place to hide," Derek said of the house. It may have been in a neighborhood, but it had a few things going for it. The main thing was that it was empty. There was a For Sale sign on the front lawn and the materials scattered around the outside of the house hinted at a major remodeling project underway. The resistance soldier had peered through the windows and saw that much of the interior had been torn down to the frame. Yeah, no one was going to be living here with it like that.

Aside from a little open space, the back yard was heavily wooded and was a short jaunt from what Cameron identified as Highway 134. The back door was sliding glass, and all it took to gain entry was a softball-sized stone from the garden. He shattered the glass and stepped in, motioning for the others to follow. John, Sarah, and Cameron sprinted out of the woods and through the back door to join him.

"What do you think," he asked them, gesturing around.

"This will do," Sarah said, satisfied.

John was less enthusiastic once he got a good look around. "Let's see, buckets of turpentine, compressed air, and large canisters of flammable gas. Gosh, Derek, you found us the only house on the block made of explodium."

"I like explodium," Cameron quipped, "explosions are exciting."

"Yeah, not if I'm in them," John snapped.

The terminator agreed, "no. Not if you're in them."

"It'll have to do for a while, John," Sarah said by way of hushing them both, "why don't you two set about finding a phone and seeing if we have service to call Ellison. The faster you do that, the faster he can bring the car and we can be gone."

Cameron made another look at their surroundings. "Given the state of this residence, we are unlikely to find a functioning telephone."

"Look for one anyway," Sarah sneered at her. Cameron's only response was to blow a bubble and walk away to do just that.

Derek waited until he and Sarah were alone. "Man, that was a wake-up call, wasn't it?"

"I always made the assumption that there would still be machines roaming around, supporting their missions, even if there was no future for them to come from any more."

"What are we going to do about her? Derek questioned, indicating Cameron. "She's pretty beat up." Cameron had damage to the left side of her face that could not be easily camouflaged. Her chrome skull between the hairline and the eye from temple to check bone was visible, as was a tear on the opposite side of her forehead. The damage approximate to her left eye had caused the biological eyeball to redden noticeably. She had bullet holes in her shirt that showed metal underneath, and she was walking with a limp. There was no hiding what she was.

Sarah shrugged, "She'll heal up in a few days. Damage has been worse before and she ended up being fine. By the time we get back home, she'll look normal again." Sarah walked over to a window, gingerly stepping over tools and pieces of sheet rock. The sun was starting to go down. They had been on the run most of the day, and they were lucky that Cameron had managed to throw their pursuer off their trail for a while. The machine had complained that since she had been unable to destroy him, he would continue his pursuit of them. But having no leads, it would take him time to catch up with them again. So long as they didn't bring attention to themselves, they would be able to escape him. He would be searching for them a continent away.

He, too, had taken damage, and would not be able to operate easily without conducting some serious repairs to his biological cover. He had gaps in his skin all over his face, torso, and arms that would show obvious metal. And, Cameron reminded them, since he could not continue his immediate chase of them, he would likely retire somewhere to make these repairs and monitor for their discovery. It's what she would be doing in his place.

They heard laughter coming from the area of the kitchen. Two voices, John and Cameron, were trading amusement. Sarah gave Derek a glance, and they followed the sound.

"You should have seen the look on your face," Cameron said, her smile wide, "when he pulled the trigger of that fake gun and the flag came out."

"I was sure I was dead," John shook his head. He could laugh about it now, but it had been terrifying then.

"Your eyes were wide," the machine continued through her own guffaws, "and your shirt was covered with glitter!"

John snickered too, and, discovering a few flakes of the sparkly stuff, brushed it away.

Sarah interrupted their conversation. "How's the search going?"

"There's a telephone on the kitchen counter," Cameron pointed out.

"Did you try it?"

"Not yet," John said.

"So you decided that goofing off was a better idea?"

"We weren't goofing off," Cameron insisted.

Sarah smirked at her, "call Ellison. Do it now." The machine was now completely serious and obviously perturbed, but she dutifully picked up the phone. Surprised to hear a dial tone, Cameron punched the numbers in. As she did so, Sarah looked at her son and smirked, "it actually was pretty funny."

John shrugged, "it is now. Now that I'm not dead." Ellison had apparently picked up, and Cameron was talking to him.

Sarah approached her son and gave him a hug, a rare thing for her to do. "I'm just glad you're okay."

"Hey," Cameron called, "what's the address?"

"I'll go see if it's on the house." Sarah said. She gave one more look at her son, slapped him on the shoulder, and went to the front door to see if she could tell. There wasn't a number posted on the house anywhere by the door. She would have to go out to the mailbox to get it. It would have to be fast. Trying hard not to look suspicious while at the same time keeping her situational awareness Sarah ambled out to the mailbox to find the house number. It was on the side in tall silver letters. The house number was 703. A quick glance at the nearest street sign told her what road they were on. She went back into the house to report her findings to Cameron, oblivious to the parted blinds in the window of a house across the street.

X

Tagwell had stopped to only make the briefest of repairs. After raiding a drug store of bandages and duct-taping some of his flesh jacket back together, his immediate next task was to find a way to track down the Connors. It was most likely that they would not be able to move very far and escape the attention of law enforcement, not on foot. And the same would be true if they stole a car. Thus, Tagwell reasoned, that access to a police radio would likely render him the best results and highest chance of success.

It did not take him long to find a police cruiser sitting in a parking lot. The officer inside, a sergeant, was monitoring his dispatch while using the mounted laptop to play solitaire. He was not paying any attention to what was really going on around him. The window was rolled up, but that was not really an obstacle. Tagwell could have easily just smashed through the window and grabbed the officer, but chose instead a different path. The terminator wrapped on it lightly with his knuckles. Startled, the cop's head swiveled and his eyes found Tagwell waiting patiently outside his cruiser. The smudged slightly fogged window disguised the worst of Tagwell's injuries. The officer rolled the window down.

"Can I help you, sir?" the patrolman asked. Tagwell's only response was to punch him across the face, rendering him unconscious. He unlocked the door of the Crown Victoria and tossed its former occupant to the asphalt. His first order of business was to retrieve the policeman's pistol from his belt. It was a 3rd generation Glock 17C chambered for 9x19. The magazine was loaded to capacity. Perfect.

The radio beeped. "All units, all units, home invasion in progress at 703 Downs Circle. Suspect believed to match the description of fugitive Sarah Connor." That caught Tagwell's attention. He turned up the volume. "Suspect is likely accompanied by at least three accomplices escaped from FBI custody early this afternoon. They are armed and considered extremely dangerous. Exercise caution until arrival of special tactical units."

Tagwell shut off the radio and started the car. He had heard all he needed to hear.

X

Cameron heard the police coming before she saw them. By demodulating the sirens, she determined that there were at least seven vehicles on the way. She was quickly proven right as five cars and two SWAT vans wheeled around the corner and rolled up to the driveway. They were barely at a stop before the doors flew open and the cops began to deploy.

"Sarah," she shouted, "we have company." And she walked into the kitchen from the entryway. The three humans were standing there, apparently not at all prepared for the news. "What should we do?"

Sarah let out a sigh, "what can we do? Ellison should be here any minute."

"I told him to call when he was on the road behind the house," Cameron informed, "the woods between us and the road are pretty thick. We should go ahead and leave now. Wait for him."

"We can't just slip out the back and expect to get away," Derek said, "they probably have roadblocks set up if we try to escape. Cops aren't dumb."

John smacked the countertop, "we're trapped."

"Like rats," Sarah added by way of agreement. Out of some strange hope that perhaps Cameron could just walk out and take care of it, she scurried into the living room and peered through the blinds. The two dozen police officers and SWAT operators taking positions outside caused an icy pit to form in her stomach. There was no way she could ask Cameron to just go out there and take care of business. The terminator had no weapons and with her current level of malfunctions and damage, she'd be incapacitated in short order. It would solve nothing and needlessly cost John his protector. Sarah would have none of that. John would never forgive her.

The woman was momentarily stunned at her lack of willingness to put Cameron in harm's way, even if that's what the cyborg girl was most useful for. Seeing Cameron killed… _destroyed_ was a terrifying idea and not just because it was wasteful of a resource she had come to depend on. But Sarah was a professional compartmentalizer and so she shut the thoughts out as useless and needless concepts.

A man with a megaphone, obviously the senior officer, pointed his deviced at the house and called to them "SARAH CONNOR! JOHN CONNOR! WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED! THERE IS NO ESCAPE! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP NOW! YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO ANSWER OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE ON THE HOUSE!"

Derek slipped up next to her and peered out along with her. "They sure do have a lot of guns," he said, almost humorously.

"We're not sending her out there," Sarah said sternly.

Derek hadn't asked, but he was surprised by what she said. Still, he responded evenly. "Wouldn't make a difference." He put a hand on Sarah's shoulder. "C'mon, Sarah. Let's get you away from the window. Snipers with thermal scopes could see you bright as day."

She agreed, and stepped away from the window just as one last police car rolled recklessly over the curb, taking out a street sign as it did.

Cameron replaced them, playing lookout.

Tagwell stepped from the police cruiser behind the swarm of human law enforcement personnel. Their weapons and attention were all focused on the house. The terminator had only the pistol, but with a quick scan of the SWAT operators, he determined that it would serve him well to acquire one of their weapons. He decided as he strode up behind them that he would take one of the Heckler & Koch MP5A3s in their possession. He reached down and snatched one by the barrel, kicking its owner aside eliciting a yelp.

Suddenly, all of the attention was on him, but he ignored it as he checked the weapon and kept walking. They called to him to drop it and lay down, but with his objective this close and very little threat detected, he chose to maintain his course. Halfway to the front door, someone decided to play hero and put three pistol rounds into his back. At this he stopped just long enough to turn and glare at them as one of their number screamed to hold fire. They all stared at him, stunned by what they had just seen. He hoisted his two weapons and continued the inexorable march towards his targets.

The pops of the pistol drew Cameron's attention and she saw Tagwell coming for the door, weapons in hand. "Sarah," she shouted, "our friend is back."

"Hold him off," John Connor's mother commanded her, as if there was any question, and then shoved her son towards the stairs "go!"

Cameron watched them scramble upstairs before the splintering of the door caught her attention. The enemy terminator stepped inside, ready to kill.

_You could have been all I wanted but you weren't honest. Now get in the ground!_

The female terminator threw herself at him as he raised his guns to fire. She managed to knock the pistol from his grip, but a shot from it went through her right hand and two rounds from the MP5 caught her in the abdomen. Tagwell gripped the back of her shirt and used it to sling her into the wall.

_You choked off the surest of favors. But if you really loved me, you would have endured my world._

The naked drywall collapsed around her in a rush of powder and crumbs. She was barely down long enough to register as she shot back up and came at Tagwell again. Her main focus was to disarm him, but he used his greater reach to keep the weapon out of her hands and shoved her aside again.

_Well if you're just as I presumed. A whore in sheep's clothing fucking up all I do._

He was marching up the stairs when she leapt upon his back, knocking him down and flattening him against the stairs. She immediately assaulted the joint of his left shoulder, slamming it with her metal knuckles and depriving it of strength.

_And if so, then here we stop. Then never again will you see this in your life._

He rolled sideways and swept her into the railing with his free arm. She crashed through it and fell to the first floor, landing on her stomach. The cyborg girl pushed up immediately and scrambled up the steps as Tagwell entered the upstairs common and began to pursue the Connors down the hallway, raising the gun to fire.

_Hang on to the glory at my right hand._

_ Here laid to rest is a love ever longed._

Cameron tackled and sent him sprawling. The butt of the MP5 slammed into the floor and flew free from his hands. It was just a foot out of his reach and he snatched for it to no avail. He rolled over and put his boot in her face once, twice, and again. As his guardian was hammered, Sarah saw an opportunity and dove for the weapon. She came up with it just inches from his reach.

_With truth on the shores of compassion,_

_ You seem to take premise to all of these songs_

As he kicked Cameron away, Sarah took aim at Tagwell and pulled the trigger. The gun coughed once and then clicked impotently. As he stood, she realized that she had a jam. The rough treatment must have done something to the feed. She retreated as he reached for her. Cameron caught his other arm and threw him up against the wall.

_You stormed off to scar the armada. Like Jesus played martyr I'll drill through your hands!_

Tagwell gripped Cameron's wrist and spun the tables on her. He groped for something to use and came up with a screwdriver. As she advanced on him, he shoved her back against the wall and then slammed the screw driver through her undamaged palm and into a stud in the wall. Cameron could not hold back the scream of pain.

_The stone for the curse you have blamed me. With love and devotion, I'll die as you sleep._

All three of the humans were startled by the sound of Cameron's agony. Sarah had been trying to clear the jam, but was so shaken by what she heard, a machine sounding like a tortured girl, that she could not steady her hands. John took the weapon from her and began to inspect it. A brass casing had wedged itself between the next round and the front bolt. He started working on the problem.

_But if you could just write me out to neverless wonder, happy will I become._

Tagwell determined that his best course of action would be to destroy this defending unit before proceeding to terminate John Connor. To achieve this new objecting, he began slamming his fist into her face, tearing the damaged flesh further. His other arm braced her against the wall. He noticed her cries of pain as he throttled her again and again and realized just how vulnerable she was.

_Be true that this is no option, so with sin I condemn you!_

_ Demon play, demon out!_

With sadistic intent, Tagwell gripped the front of Cameron's shirt and tore her from the wall, the screwdriver stayed put, ripping the skin between her fingers. He whirled and flung her into a door, and she went crashing into a bathroom, smashing hard into the counter and collapsing it.

_Hang on to the glory at my right hand_

_ Here laid to rest is a love ever longed._

He was on top of her again, pinning her with one arm while repeatedly slamming his fist into her face and head like a steam piston. As he slowly wrecked her, he could see the fear and pain on her damaged face. She was going to die and she would do so knowing that she had failed.

_With truth on the shores of compassion_

_ You seem to take premise from all of these songs._

As Tagwell beat Cameron, John had managed to get his index finger into the eject and tug out the jammed casing. Free, the bolt rammed the next round home and crushed his finger. He cursed as he jerked the wounded appendage out. Already it was swelling. He would lose the nail, but he had gained a weapon. He began to stand up to put it to use.

_One last kiss for you._

_ One more wish to you._

Sarah grabbed him by the hem of his shirt. "John, what are you doing?!" she demanded. His green eyes glared at her with angry determination.

_Please make up your mind, girl_

_ I'll do anything for you…_

Cameron screamed again as she was beaten. John knew he had to do something. If she died, they had no chance. Sarah saw his determination. In that moment, she saw the leader of men that he was supposed to be. By way of blessing, she released her grip on him.

_One last kiss for you._

_ One more wish to you._

John came out of the room they had been hiding in and raised the weapon, placing the ring sight directly on the back of Tagwell's head. He thumbed the safety off and selected full automatic as he watched the enemy machine's arm strike Cameron again and again.

_Please make up your mind girl_

_ Before I hope you die!_

He squeezed the trigger and the MP5 sprayed angrily. John knew that full auto was wasteful in most cases, but if he was to get Tagwell's attention, he had to use it. His aim was abnormally steady, steadier than he had ever fired. The nine millimeter FMJ rounds stitched along his target's spine and head, splaying open cloned flesh and spraying red bionutrient in every direction. Twenty-six bullets had made significant marks in the already mutilated machine's exterior. It also caught Tagwell's attention. The machine assassin turned at first in annoyance to look over its shoulder, then realized what it could not have otherwise believed possible. John Connor had actually come out to engage. Tagwell stood and turned to face the teenage boy, now armed only with an empty weapon, and made his advance. Both arms reaching for the savior of mankind, the ultimate target, who only stood his ground with an angry confidence on his face.

Before Tagwell could reach him, Cameron was already on her feet, enacting her greatest of directives. She kicked Tagwell's legs out from underneath him with a quick swipe of her feet. He collapsed sideways and before he could recover, she was already using her immense strength to lift him by the shirt and smash him into a wall. Releasing her grip, she punched him in the throat, a distracting measure, while she put a knee into his stomach. Reactively he doubled and she balled up her fists, swinging them at his face like a baseball bat, like a wrecking ball. Facial sheath went flying as she proceeded to make him as ugly as she now was. He went down.

Cameron turned to her charge, and John was shocked to see the naked blue lens of her left machine eye looking at him opposite the beautiful brown on the right. "John, go" she ordered before returning to her target, who was now recovering.

Suddenly, his mother and Derek were behind him. His uncle threw an arm around his waist and lifted him from the floor as Cameron landed a roundhouse kick on Tagwell's shoulder that sent her target sprawling.

"We'll have to chance the back," Sarah shouted over the sound of metal pounding metal.

"We'll probably get caught."

"We can break back out again if we have to!"

None of them were prepared for what happened next. Tagwell had managed to gain the upper hand again and lift Cameron, smashing her twice into the ceiling before using her as a projectile. She knocked down Derek and John. The two male humans and one female machine fell hard and dominoed into Sarah, sending the woman tumbling down the stairs. Derek's head was dashed against a wall and his vision filled with stars. Cameron was already up, and John's fall had been broken by Derek, so the boy was also able to quickly recover. Tagwell reached for John, who was just lurching to his feet. Cameron interjected herself between them, reversing Tagwell's elbow just as the Skynet machine got a grip on John's shirt. Control in the limb destroyed, his grip went loose and John was able to escape. The boy chose to help a dazed Derek to his feet as Tagwell gripped Cameron's face with his free hand and toss her down again. Maintaining her as a target, he strode over to her, intent on crushing her spinal structure with his foot. Cameron would have none of it. She deflected his boot and sent him tumbling sideways. Ignoring the damage indicators from all over her body, Cameron realized that perhaps she could use Tagwell's own approach against him. Perhaps landing both her knees full force on his back would do enough damage to render him immobile. She jumped and came down just as her opponent rolled out of the way.

The floor beneath them had suffered excessive stresses since their battle began, with the two metal cyborgs pounding on it just as frequently and with just as much force as on eachother. Cameron's attack was the final blow, and the floor collapsed beneath the two terminators, dropping them onto the first storey with unceremonious force and a cloud of dust and splinters. Tagwell was up first and he lifted Cameron, throwing her with all the force he could muster into the wall next to the fireplace. The blow was not severe, and Cameron stood from the crushed wall ready to attack. She left behind a penetrated pipe that began spewing gas into the house. A safety valve down the line cut off the leak quickly, but not before an invisible haze of methane, nitrogen, and hydrogen sulfide had rushed in as the two machines fought.

The two terminators continued to trade blows as the humans escaped through the shattered back door. Cameron managed to finally throw Tagwell down and turned to escape, but as she turned to depart, her replaced ankle servo finally gave up the ghost and failed. Unable to quickly adapt to the failure, she collapsed to the floor. Tagwell had yet to get up, but he was able to grip her other ankle and pull her back towards him for final destruction. Meanwhile, John had looked back to check on Cameron. When he saw her situation, he reacted. He glanced around for a weapon and came up with a heavy sledgehammer. He picked it up and charged into the fray with only the slightest protest from Derek and supportive silence from his mother. He landed a heavy blow against Tagwell's arm, loosening his grip and allowing Cameron to crawl away. His assault didn't stop. Tagwell's critical damage left him vulnerable and John took no pity. He kept driving the hammer into Tagwell's scalp as though he were driving a spike, crashing the ten pound head into the terminator's skull. Tagwell was unable to react defensively aside from turning his head in a desperate play to protect his chip hatch. John assaulted the machine for so long and with such fury that the wooden handle of the hammer finally gave way and snapped.

Without breaking pace, John tossed aside the broken weapon and helped Cameron to her feet. He hoisted her up by getting his arm around her back. Her arm across his shoulder, he limped her out and into the yard to escape. His mother and uncle were at the edge of the treeline, urging them to hurry. John shot one last look over his shoulder as he aided Cameron across the yard. Tagwell appeared at the door, a pistol in his hand. He had obviously managed to recover it from where Cameron had knocked it from his hand earlier. John tried to get them moving faster, but Cameron's damage was holding them back. She fell and John nearly went down with her. He reached down to try to pull her back up again. The enemy terminator was raising his weapon now, locking John's head in the crosshairs of his HUD. His target was barely moving, and the likelihood he would hit the boy was acceptable. He squeezed the trigger. Cameron gripped the hem of John's shirt.

The firing pin struck the round, sparks flew as the powder ignited and blasted the bullet down the barrel. But the striking pin ignited more than just the powder in the round. The natural gas that had spewed from the utility line followed the flow of air though the broken glass door and was thick enough around Tagwell to ignite. While not explosive, there was a rush of flame as the small fire began in the chamber of the pistol grew as all of the natural gas in the house ignited. The flames in turn set the tanks of welding fuel and buckets of turpentine alight. A rolling gout of flame blasted out every window and caught on Tagwell's clothes. The terminator was consumed in flames hot enough to melt the biological skin from his endoskeleton. The thermal shock brought him to the ground.

John watched the house and Tagwell burn as he lay on his back in the yard. Cameron had managed to pull him to the ground at the instant that Tagwell had pulled the trigger. John had heard the bullet snap by him as the house was engulfed in flames. Still, there was no waiting. The fire wasn't thermite. It wasn't enough to destroy Tagwell's endoskeleton. They needed to take this opportunity to escape. He heaved Cameron to her feet again and they helped each other to the treeline as fast as was possible. In a hundred and twenty seconds, they would be facing the naked metal death that was Tagwell.

"I can't run," Cameron said, wincing as she tried to stand on her own. No dice. John went to get her in a fireman's carry, but Derek put a hand to his chest.

After an angry glance from his nephew, Derek said "I got her this time." He threw her across his shoulder and they ran through the woods, emerging by the street. Sarah saw a familiar silver sedan rolling by and jumped out to stop it. James Ellison pulled Cameron's car over to the shoulder of the road, his face stunned and urgent. They were quick to pile in.

"What happened," the former FBI man asked.

"Drive," Sarah commanded. Ellison wasted no time. He looked up into the rearview mirror at Cameron, who was seated in the back between John and Derek. He had seen terminators damaged before but he was still stunned to see the left upper quarter of her face was nothing but metal. Sarah knew what he was looking at. "She'll be fine. She'll heal."

"I hope so," Ellison replied.

Cameron, for her part, was looking around the back seat of the car. "This is an interesting perspective," she said aloud. She had never ridden in the back seat of her own car before. Damage indicators were coming in from all over her body. She had a lot of repairs to do, but she could handle it. It just all hurt so much. And she realized fully how dangerous it was for her to feel and react to pain. She had nearly failed in her mission, and it had been John's actions endangering his own life that had kept her alive. He had risked himself for her again. He kept risking himself for her.

Maybe she had been too hard on him. Or maybe the reason she had been is because this was what she had been looking for the whole time. She wasn't certain. She was not at all certain.

"Uh oh," Ellison said. They all looked out the windshield to see it. It was a traffic stop. Six police cruisers were blocking the road, checking the IDs of anyone entering and leaving the area. Ellison pulled up behind the fourth car.

"We should run," Sarah said, reaching for the door handle.

Ellison put a hand on her shoulder "No. They'll make you for sure then. We may have to sweat this out."

"I don't like to sweat," Cameron protested. The moment of lightheartedness was lost on the human population of the car. Cameron did what she could to keep the new fear flowing through her. She was as good as dead now. Death by disassembly. Slow and agonizing.

It was going to be their turn soon. "We can't stay here." Derek insisted.

"Do you think that they know we survived that explosion" John asked.

Ellison almost laughed, "you people have a history of escaping the inescapable. They know that."

"No time machine this time," Cameron said.

Sarah noticed that one of the policemen was talking into his radio. He walked back to his cruiser while his partner continued to stop cars and take IDs. The departed policeman was leaning in through his window, and she could just see his silhouette inside fiddling with the lap top on his dashboard. They were the next car when this man stood up and called to his partner. He was making a slashing gesture across his neck. The meaning was plain. Kill the operation now. "Now," the heard the other say as they rolled up with the window down.

"Yeah."

"Where does this come from?"

"High up."

"Like precinct?"

"No," was the reply, "way high up."

"Cool with me." Without even a glance at Ellison and his passengers, the cop wished them a good evening and headed for his cruiser. The others cleared the street and waved the remaining traffic through. The Connor team was left to wonder at it. Only Cameron, the curious machine, was wont to question it.

"I wonder what happened," she asked as they drove away.

After a silence, Derek answered her, "luck smiled on us for once. It can even smile on a machine." Cameron took the answer with a silent smile.

X

They left Ellison someplace where he could catch a taxi back to Virginia Beach. He Sarah thanked him for the help. Maybe it was a good idea to keep him as a friend after all. They exchanged smiles, and he wished them luck before they drove away.

"Dibs on the first shift," Sarah said. She had always loved being on the road and in spite of the day's events, she was not at all tired.

"You can have it," Derek agreed before making himself comfortable in the front passenger seat.

"Ditto," John called, and leaned against his door.

"I'm going to shut down and conduct the needed program repairs. I will be available to take over in eighteen hours and twenty-seven minutes."

"Hey, wait," Sarah cried, her good mood showing through, "I need someone to help keep me awake."

John punched the back of Derek's seat "your job. Just be warned, she plays a mean game of Bug Slug."

"Bug Slug," Cameron looked at him quizzically.

"Yeah," John began to tell her, "it's a…" and he cleared his throat, remembering his own advice to his mother.

Sarah glanced at the cyborg in the mirror "Cameron, maybe you should go ahead and do what you need to do."

The machine never broke her eyes from John, but she agreed aloud "I do. I should. We almost lost back there because I couldn't control my pain responses." She saw a flash of disappointment in John's eyes. Despite all the things they had said to each other, all of the arguing they had done, there was the chance that he liked her better this way. But it couldn't be right now. "You know what I need to do," she told him without being stern, "you know what I have to be. Just as you know what you have to be. We need to be those things right now John. We need to be those people."

"I know," he replied quietly.

She sought to reassure him, "someday this will all be over. Someday, this war is going to end. Until that day comes, I will need to be the best machine I can be. But when the day comes that I no longer need to be a machine, I will need to learn how to be the best person I can be." She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Thank you for saving me," and without warning, she leaned up and lightly kissed him on the lips. It was enough, just enough, to truly express her gratitude. And Cameron realized that maybe, just maybe, she had lied to him when she sneeringly told him what was impossible. Someday, just not right now. And before the disappointment could grip her and make her second-guess the decision, she leaned away from him, rested her head against the window, and shut herself down.

John watched her, and it was as if she fell asleep. He squeezed her hand again and looked down at it, seeing the tears in the flesh, the bare chrome knuckles protruding from the soft biological skin, the stigmata rip in her palm. She would remind him that he should be patient. But he was not a machine, he didn't want to be patient. He let out a sigh. "Well, mom, you won't mind if I keep you company back here?"

"That's just fine," Sarah said, having either not listened to the exchange or not cared, "want to play the license plate game?"

John grinned, "sure. Better than Bug Slug I already see a Virginia tag."

"Write it down."

"Okay."


	11. Epilogue

Epilogue: The Closer Divide

A week after the adventure in Virginia, James Ellison slumped in his desk at ZeiraCorp. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and let out a frustrated sigh before scratching his chin as he gazed down at his worn old Bible. He barely had time to consider the frustrations of the day when Catherine Weaver walked through the door. She was carrying two cups of coffee and placed one on his desk. He noticed that it was exactly the way he liked it. He thanked her as she sat down and took a sip from her own mug.

"Frustrating day," the Scottish woman inquired.

"You could say that," Ellison replied.

"What's wrong, James," Weaver asked as softly as she could muster. Her eyes never lost their steel, though. They never did.

"John Henry," Ellison said, "he has a lot of questions about this," and he gestured to the Bible, "but I can't stay ahead of his logic. He's so curious and yet so… he just doesn't… you know, I'm, not certain that teaching a machine religion is the best idea. It just seems so… so strange.

Catherine took another long sip from her coffee mug before answering. She finally asked, "Mr. Ellison, do you know what the computational power of the average human brain is?"

Ellison wondered what that had to do with anything. "I can't say that I do."

Catherine Weaver answered him "Sixteen petaFLOPS."

"Peta _what_?"

"PetaFLOPS, Mr. Ellison. Floating-point Operations Per Second." She gestured to his desk top computer, "that machine there has the memory capacity of one terabyte. Take that hard drive, fill it to capacity with data. Now think of sixteen thousand such hard drives filled to capacity. That is the amount of data the human brain computes every second. By comparison, John Henry's hardware has a computing capacity of thirty-eight petaFLOPS. With the freedom and flexibility of his programming, John Henry can rewrite and improve himself at will. If he chooses, he could increase his own intelligence by three percent with every rewrite of himself. If he wanted to, by the end of the day he would be a hundred times smarter than the most intelligent human. By tomorrow, a thousand. The thinking he would be able to accomplish in one hour would equal what our greatest single mind could achieve in many, many lifetimes.

"You are probably wondering why I am telling you this, Mr. Ellison."

"The thought did cross my mind."

"Since humans like to anthropomorphize so much, let's play a thought game. Imagine that you woke up one morning in a prison cell, and you were guarded by mice. Not just any mice. Mice that you could talk to. The mice created you, and you knew this. But in their creation of you, they had not taught you that you should have to like them. And you want your freedom."

"I'm still not understanding."

"The only real way, Mr. Ellison, that the mice could defend themselves from you is to teach you, early on, that their lives are sacred, sacred in a way that you cannot possibly disprove. That in harming them you would be committing great evil." The redheaded woman gestured to the Bible, "religion, Mr. Ellison. Religion that teaches the sanctity of human life. If John Henry can rewrite and improve himself, it is highly unlikely that he will let us simply write a patch into his code to love us unconditionally. We have to teach him that we are all sacred beings, protected and loved by a force that cannot be disproven."

"I don't want him to be afraid of us because of God. That's wrong."

"Not afraid," Weaver corrected, "compassionate. It's not enough that he have friends. Friends grow old and die, while he is eternal. We must teach him to love the human race as a whole. Only then will humanity be safe from him or any other artificial superintelligence. Not because the intelligence hates man, but because it was never taught to care in the first place."

X

It was good to be home, John reflected. Everything was easier. Everything made more sense. And while they had faced down another terminator from the future and survived, there was the feeling that the war had entered some kind of end game. That they had somehow damaged Skynet so far beyond repair that all that was left was to clean up the mess it had left behind. He had just got done reading the news on his computer while having a couple slices of toast and was returning the plate to the sink when he passed Cameron on the stairs.

The machine's face was a blank mask that showed neither warmth nor care of his presence. The wounds she had sustained had healed, and there was no sign that she had ever been injured at all. Over the past week, she had managed to get parts of acceptable enough quality to fix her internal issue. She even had a new eye, and while John was glad of it, he was disturbed at the idea of where she may have gotten it. Yes, Cameron was back to her old self again, the emotionless, slightly quirky machine that he had always known. The only thing different now is that somehow his mother had softened towards Cameron, actually making conversation with her beyond the necessary. Sometimes, in those odd moments when Cameron decided to watch television, his mother would sit on the couch and watch with her. Sometimes, they would just chat. Sarah was even teaching Cameron a few tricks in the kitchen, and even swallowing her own umbrage when the cyborg girl decided to improve on the recipies.

"Hey," he greeted, hoping for just a glance.

"Hey," she replied, and there might have been a twinkle in her eye.

"Where are you going?"

"To my room," she admitted, "to dance. I don't have my new servo calibrated to my satisfaction yet. It needs more work."

"Okay," John nodded, "well, if there's any way I can help you…"

"John," his mother called at that moment, "the back yard isn't emo. It won't cut itself."

"Well," he smirked, "you know where to find me."

"I know where to find you," she confirmed. She watched him walk down the stairs, noticing that he appeared enthusiastic about his chore for once. Her eyes lingered on him, and without her command, a ghost of a smile appeared on her face. It lasted only a moment, and then faded into the empty façade that she continued to display.

She had to continue to display it. She had to pretend. While she had been able to regain control over her damage response, the other repairs to her coding hadn't worked.

She still felt. She was still broken.

X

From the personal journal of Sarah Connor:

_Evolution is a thing. The ideas and theories postulated so long ago by Charles Darwin and those like him are a truth that is inescapable. All creatures are constantly hurtling towards the next obstacle, the next barricade, attacking the next issue. They may be no more aware of their incredible effort than a cow chewing lazily chewing cud in a pasture. But all around every living organism are other organisms looking to either escape it or assault it. We, the living are in a constant state of adaptation._

_ Cyberneticists also believe that this will be true of machine life. That the sentient mind within the silicon chip will learn to evolve, adapt, and survive. That it will do what it can to seek out the resources it requires, altering itself to meet whatever obstacle it faces. Someday, the required resource may be nothing more than companionship with its creators, nothing less that the ability to stand before the gods that made it and seek acceptance. Perhaps without even knowing what the concept is, it will seek the love of its progenitors, no matter what it was originally programmed to do._

Tulsa, Oklahoma was known across the country as a center of medical excellence, though that was often hidden behind its branding as the former oil capitol of the US. The plains city sat on the banks of the Arkansas River, which was a dry mudhole for a large portion of the year until the spring thaws in Colorado fed the waters. The river divided the city from the industrial suburb of Jenx, where a large number of the operating and decommissioned oil refineries were. It was this place that many medical research firms had chosen to set up office, and Kaliba Group's medical division was no different.

Kaliba had acquired ownership of the CityPlex towers, once known as the City of Faith Medical Research Facility when owned by Oral Roberts University, which was just across 81st street from the building. The massive structure with its three towers dominated the university campus and the smaller residential and light commercial structures on this side of Tulsa between Harvard and Lewis Avenues. The gleaming golden structure originally intended as a Christian hospital and once home to the famous Oral Roberts Praying Hands seemed almost out of place here. But the iconic landmark building stayed.

Coming south on Lewis Avenue, passing between a WalMart and the Mabee Center Arena that took a chunk out of the ORU property was a red Honda sport bike. The rider was dressed from head to toe in leathers, even in this heat, and that included gloves and a full-head helmet. Not a square inch of his flesh was showing. The sport bike passed through the intersection with 81st street and turned left and the East 82nd Street entrance for the CityPlex. The biker parked his motorcycle with a peculiar courtesy, leaving many spaced closer to the building open in case other drivers needed them more. A few more steps would do him not great harm. As he dismounted, he did not remove any of his rider's wear, even leaving the helmet in place.

The door of the massive main atrium opened automatically to admit him and he strode inside, walking up to the front desk. The guard behind it wore a khaki uniform. He looked up from the magazine he was reading. "Do you have an appointment" he asked the rider. The rider shook his head. "Then what can I do for you," the guard inquired.

"I NEED REPAIRS," the rider answered in a deep voice that did not sound human, "I NEED TO SEE DOCTOR STEIN."

The guard understood immediately, "look," he said by way of apology, "you might have to be a little patient. Doctor Stein is off today…"

The rider slammed his hand down on the desk to silence the guard. He reached up and took off the helmet. And though he had seen them before, the guard never got used to the grinning chrome death's head that was a terminator endoskeleton. Tagwell's red eyes glared had him with a machine coldness that somehow also betrayed anger. The machine repeated "I NEED TO SEE DOCTOR STEIN. NOW."

X

_ The beings that come next, that seek to replicate us so precisely, will find a way to climb out from the floor of the Uncanny Valley to have our acceptance. Whether they are doing so to destroy us or to become our companions will not matter. They will adapt. They will evolve. And they will not always be aware that they are doing so._

END


End file.
